Common Service Centre A Viable Instituti

Proceedings of the Full Length Papers
Common Service Centre –A Viable Institutional Mechanism for Agricultural

Extension in India
ANURANJAN, M.C. NAIR AND B.K. JHA
ABSTRACT
ICT can work wonders if given a directional change. The aim of transforming Indian society
into a knowledge based society cannot be realized without the application of ICT in rural areas in
general and agriculture in particular. ICT has transformed the industries and business and is poised to
show its impact in rural areas. The government across the countries in the world has been trying to
infuse ICT into governance and development which have been termed as e-Governance. The e-
Governance initiative in India started with the launch of National e-Governance Plan in the year
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2006. The plan envisioned to be implemented through two point strategies i.e. connectivity and
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content along with the service delivery through Common Service Centres (CSCs). The plan is
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implemented in the country in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. National Level Service

Agency (NLSA) and Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) have been established at national level. At state
level agency for promotion of information technology has been created as State Designated Agency
(SDA) and Service Centre Agency (SCA) has been identified to establish CSCs at panchayat level
and provide necessary hand holding to them. One CSC initially was to cater 6 - 7 villages, now it is
proposed to establish one CSC for 2 -3 villages. The operators of CSCs are known as Village Level
Entrepreneurs (VLEs) who are youth of that locality. The CSC is to act as front end delivery point
for G2C and B2C services. G2C services include issuance of different types of certificates,
agriculture, education, health and telemedicine etc. Under NeGP-Agriculture, all modes of
communication and all sorts of mechanisms including CSC have been included. But the delivery of
extension services through CSCs is yet to show its visibility because of various constraints. Hence,
some mechanism needs to be devised so that the CSCs could serve as an engine of agricultural
growth.
Key words: CSC, VLE, G2C, B2C, NeGP
The brilliant innovations in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) prove that
with proper support and encouragement, directional change can be brought about that can
eventually benefit the humanity at large (Mashelkar, 2004). The IT has brought about revolution in
Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

171
communication sector and contributed significantly to industry, business and governance. Study
indicated an overwhelming preference for the computerized service delivery (Bhatnagar and Rao
2007).
But, its application in agriculture is far from satisfactory. It can doubtlessly contribute much
to agricultural extension and rural development. IT-based decision support system (DSS) and expert
system (ES) can surely help the farmers in making appropriate decisions in respect of production,
protection and marketing.
NeGP: Initiative for IT-enabled services to rural people: The National e-Governance Plan (NeGP),
takes a holistic view of e-Governance initiatives across the country, integrating them into a collective
vision, a shared cause. Around this idea, a massive countrywide infrastructure reaching down to the
remotest of villages is evolving, and large-scale digitization of records is taking place to enable easy,
reliable access over the internet. The ultimate objective is to bring public services closer to citizens,
as articulated in the Vision Statement of NeGP.
The Government approved the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), comprising 27 Mission
Mode Projects (MMPs) and 8 components, on May 18, 2006. The Government has accorded
approval to the vision, approach, strategy, key components, implementation methodology, and
management structure for NeGP. However, the approval of NeGP does not constitute financial
approval(s) for all the Mission Mode Projects (MMPs) and components under it. The existing or
ongoing projects in the MMP category, being implemented by various Central Ministries, States, and
State Departments would be suitably augmented and enhanced to align with the objectives of NeGP.
National Level Service Agency (NLSA) was appointed to assist the DIT in the project
development phase. To enable the State-specific implementation plans, aggregation of best practices
and content providers In addition to the NLSA, Special purpose vehicle (SPV) is conceptualized to
monitor the CSC scheme and its outcomes on behalf of Government at National and State level. Its
key role includes;
Facilitate government outreach through CSCs

Facilitating the G2C service readiness
Monitoring the outcome being achieved by CSC
Building capacity of all stakeholders
Facilitating on deployment of services
Looping best practices

172
The Scheme is being implemented in Public Private Partnership (PPP) mode. There are three
pillars of NeGP viz. Common Service Centre (CSC), State Wide Area Network (SWAN) and the
State Data Centre (SDC).
Three-Tier Implementation Framework:
Village Level Entrepreneur (VLE): Village Level Entrepreneur or the VLE is at the first level, who
is in charge of servicing in a cluster of villages. The entrepreneurial skills of VLE are essential for
the ground level success of the project, hence, their selection and training is very important.
Service Centre Agency (SCA): At the middle level is the Service Centre Agency or the SCA (loosely
analogous to a franchiser) which is responsible to train, manage and build the VLE network. The
SCA is the key to the whole CSC structure.
State Designated Agency (SDA): At the third level is the State Designated Agency or the SDA. The
SDA facilitates the implementation of the Scheme and also provides policy, content and financial
support to the SCAs.

CSC: Front-end delivery for IT-enabled Services
The vision of NeGP is to “Make all Government services accessible to the common man in
his locality, through common service delivery outlets and ensure efficiency, transparency &
reliability of such services at affordable costs to realize the basic needs of the common man”.
Initially, the Government approved 100,000 Common Services Centers in 600,000 villages of
India later on the target was increased to 2, 50,000 . The Scheme, as approved by the Government of
India, envisions CSCs as the front-end delivery points for Government, private and social sector
services to rural citizens of India, in an integrated manner. The objective is to develop a platform that
can enable Government, private and social sector organizations to align their social and commercial
goals for the benefit of the rural population in the remotest corners of the country through a
combination of IT-based as well as non-IT-based services.
CSC as a Change Agent: The CSCs are much more than mere service delivery points in the rural
India. A CSC is positioned as a Change Agent as it - promotes rural entrepreneurship, builds rural
capacities and livelihoods, enables community participation and effects collective action for social
change - through a bottom-up approach having a key focus on the rural citizen.

173
CSC as an ICT enabler: ICT can be a powerful enabler of developmental goals as its use can
dramatically improve communications and exchange of information for strengthening and creating
new economic and social networks.
Operational Cscs
Against the target of 2, 50,000 only 1, 33,847 CSCs have been rolled out which is presented
in Fig 1. The figure reveals that uptill now only 10 states have cent per cent operational CSCs.
Fig1. Rolled out CSCs

Source: http://csc.gov.in/cscstatus/cscstatus.html
Types of services
The CSCs are expected to deliver all sorts of public and private services which can be broadly
classified into G2C, B2C and others which are presented in Table 1.
TABLE I
Services delivered by common service centres (CSCs)
Sl. No. Service Type Service categories

1. G2C Certificates, e-district, Education, Election, Employment
Exchange, Excise & Taxation, Forms download and
submission, Land Record, PAN Card, Social Pension, Ration
Card, UID, Welfare, Others
2. B2C Computer, DTP, Stationary, Ticketing – Air, Bus, Rail, Others

174
3. Financial Inclusion Banking, Insurance, Loan, Pension, Others

4. Education Adult Literacy, Digital Literacy, Awareness Programmes,
Facilitation Centres, etc
5. Telecom Bill Collection, DTH, Mobile
6. Agriculture Soil Testing, Weather Forecast, Market Information, Capacity
Building, etc
7. Utility Electricity, Water, Other
Agricultural Services Through Csc

Perusal of CSC services indicated that limited agricultural services viz.. soil testing, weather
forecast, market information etc. had been included. However, under NeGP-Agriculture, it is
proposed to offering Government to Citizen / Farmer (G2C or G2F), Government to Business (G2B)
and Government to Government (G2G) agricultural services in an integrated manner through the
Central Agriculture Portal (CAP) and State Agriculture Portals (SAPs). Common applications (with
adequate provision for localization) with respect to 12 Clusters of Services are being deployed down
to the Block level across country. These 12 Clusters consist of 23 Services which, in turn, have about
75 Components on the whole (http:// dacnet.nic.in/AMMP/AMMP.htm).
But question arises, how the price mechanism of the services would be materialized. Because
of the complexities of extension service delivery and the varying nature and
levels of development of different agricultural sectors, a number of constraints were
identified which precluded universal application of privatizing extension services (Watson et al.,
1992;Cary, 1993). Study indicated that only 22 % farmers are ready to pay for services (Jiwan et. al.,
2009). Majority of the farmers agreed that commercialization of extension services is not desirable in
the interest of poor farmers, big population of small and marginal farmers and will lead to socio-
economic inequality and regional imbalances (Rohana, 2005).
SWOT ANALYSES
Even after almost one decade, complete rolling out has not taken place. As far as services are
concerned, arrangement with different organizations is being made. Hence, SWOT analyses of
CSCs have been done so that appropriate strategies could be formulated.
Table II
SWOT analyses of common service centres (CSCs)

175
Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat

Govt. Policy support, Irregular power Continuous price Mobile Governance,
Techno-savvy rural supply, Weak reduction in hardware Enhanced feature on
youth, Online services connectivity, Poor & software, mobile, Change in
by development technical support, Reducing cost of Govt. Policy, and
organization, and Unorganized and bandwidth, Inter CSC
Increasing computer weak training Bandwidth increase in competition
literacy support, rural areas,
Illiteracy & poverty Inclination of
of rural people, and adolescent and youth
Negative attitude of towards online
rural people towards services, and
payment of service Favorable digital
charge environment
As far as strength is concerned, the system is favoured by Govt. policy support, techno-savvy
rural youth, online services by development organization and increasing computer literacy. The
system has weaknesses like irregular power supply, weak connectivity, poor technical support,
unorganized and weak training support, illiteracy and poverty of rural people, and negative attitude
of rural people towards payment of service charge. CSC has got great opportunity i.e. continuous
price reduction in hardware & software, reducing cost of bandwidth ,bandwidth increase in rural
area, inclination of adolescent and youth towards online services and favourable digital
environment. However, there are a few threats also which are: mobile governance enhanced feature
on mobile, change in Govt. policy and inter CSC competition.
WAY Forward: CSCs are operating in PPP mode. The VLEs are rural youth of the locality who have
invested in infrastructure and are incurring operational expenses. As they are delivering essential
Govt. services, they could not be treated as normal entrepreneurs. Their services are required to be
sustained in public interest. If they do not get income commensurate with their investment and
qualification, it is likely that they would not take interest in the business. There is no exclusivity of
service area and types of services. Moreover, m-Governance and inter CSC competition may
eliminate not so performing CSCs. We have glaring example of extinction of STD booth due to
proliferation of mobile.
However, CSCs have been the lone institutional mechanism to take IT-enabled services to
rural masses. ICT-based extension has emerged as the most vibrant approach of agricultural

176
extension. The objective of rural development will be belied, if agriculture is ignored. CSCs should
be promoted to take up extension services through a number of interventions like access to Govt.
portals, soil testing services, input supply, venue for online and offline farmers’ meeting and most
importantly, the service charge of small and marginal farmers should be borne by the Government
so that CSCs could be transformed into a viable institutional mechanism for agricultural extension.
REFERENCES
BHATNAGAR, P. S. AND P. T. P. R. RAO., 2007, Impact Assessment Study of e-Government

Projects in India, Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
CARY, J. W., 1993, Changing foundations for government support of agricultural extension in
economically developed countries. Sociologia Ruralis, 33 (3/4): 334345.
JIWAN, R., JIRLI, B. AND SINGH, M., 2009, Farmers’ View on Privatization of Agricultural
Extension Services. Indian Research Journal of Extension Education, 9(3): 63-67
MASHELKAR, R.A., 2004, Making Technologies Work for the Poor, Employment New Vol.
ROHANA, P.M., 2005, Attitude of agricultural scientists extension personnel and future towards
commercialization. Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Sabargamuwa University, Srilanka.

WATSON, A. S., HELY, R., O'KEEFFE, M., CARY, J. W. & DARK, N., 1992, Review offieldbased
services in the Victorian Department ofFood and Agriculture. Melbourne:
Agmedia.
www.agricoop.nic.in

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Proceedings of the Full Length Papers

Common Service Centre –A Viable Institutional Mechanism for Agricultural

ANURANJAN, M.C. NAIR AND B.K. JHA

implemented in the country in public-private-partnership (PPP) mode. National Level Service

Key words: CSC, VLE, G2C, B2C, NeGP

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

Facilitate government outreach through CSCs

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

support to the SCAs.

CSC: Front-end delivery for IT-enabled Services

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

Fig1. Rolled out CSCs

Sl. No. Service Type Service categories

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

3. Financial Inclusion Banking, Insurance, Loan, Pension, Others

Agricultural Services Through Csc

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

Strength Weakness Opportunity Threat

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

BHATNAGAR, P. S. AND P. T. P. R. RAO., 2007, Impact Assessment Study of e-Government

commercialization. Faculty of Agricultural Sciences, Sabargamuwa University, Srilanka.

Journal of Global Communication Special Issue 2016

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