What is CSC

Established in 2012, CSC Forum is an initiative of the Service Centre Agencies (SCA) to come together to form CSC Forum, which is an apex body, and looks after the welfare & interest of the Private Players running the Common Service Centre (CSC) Project. The strength of CSC Forum lies in its member bodies that are composite wisdom of the CSC Scheme and present a multi-disciplined approach to develop the CSCs. It’s the only body of its kind in India.

The Forum as on date represents 8 major SCAs who run Pan India covering 70% of the CSCs in the country. As on date CSC Forum has its presence in West Bengal, Odisha, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Assam, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Punjab, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Tripura, Meghalaya, Pondicherry, Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Together we form a mammoth network of approx 70000 numbers of Common Service Centre.

A)     A Brief about CSC Program of Government of India

Common Service Centre is the front end delivery platform of the NeGP (National e Governance Program) of Government of India. This Project was introduced in the year 2007 and since then 1,20,000 CSCs have been set up under the PPP (Public Private Partnership) Model in collaboration with Ministry of Electronics and IT.

The PPP model of the CSC scheme envisages a 3-tier structure consisting of the CSC operator (called Village Level Entrepreneur or VLE), the Service Centre Agency (SCA); that will be responsible for covering a group of districts in a state and a State Designated Agency (SDA) identified by the State Government responsible for managing the implementation over the entire State. The genesis of the CSC project (under the Department of Information Technology, Ministry of Information Technology) was done with the objective of providing G2C and B2C services to rural citizen.

B)     A Brief about Common Service Centre

CSC is a permanent structure located within 20-80km from Tehsil Level and enjoys regular footfalls. A single CSC covers 4 to 5 villages and a population stratum of 10,000.  These CSCs serve as a major discussion place and unique range of G2C & B2C services make people of almost every segment to visit CSCs. The range of services include Pan Card Services, Aadhaar Card Services, Election Services, Educational Services, Micro Insurance and Banking Services, Consumer utility Services such as Bus tickets, Airline tickets, Mobile Recharges, Bill Collections, Money Transfer and a gamut of other services.

C)     A Brief about Village Level Entrepreneur

A VLE is a local villager and a grass-root level influencer. A VLE acts as a partner to the SCA for executing CSC projects at the field level. The VLE forms a channel for sharing of information from/to the villagers & the SCA.

D)     A Brief about Service Centre Agency

Over the years, SCAs have made significant investments in not only identifying, training and operating the CSCs run by Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) but have also been the prime enabler of this program. SCAs have created a complete infrastructure for training & skill building of VLEs so that they are made competent & self-sufficient to sell products & services to the rural citizens. GoI, through SCAs, has being using the CSC channel to make available G2C services to the rural citizens. In the B2C domain, SCAs have identified products & services relevant to the rural citizens & have taken the lead role in commercially on boarding partners & service providers. SCAs have enabled consumer engagement programs & generate foot falls at CSCs.

These SCAs are an active member of CSC Forum and are providing last mile access to organizations and various central and state level ministries looking for distribution of services, communication, advertising, activation, data collection, social research and sourcing of skilled workers from rural. CSC Forum is growing every day with increase in interest of association from other operating SCAs and curiosity expressed by corporate organization in partnering CSC Forum to explore the deep rural hinterland. 

Along with our existing Bouquet of B2C services, we would wish to also introduce distribution, marketing and sale of your products through our Common Service Centres.  To take this forward our members would like to get associated with your esteemed organization.

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