The Challenges of Last Mile Delivery of Services: Common Service Centres in the National E-governance Plan of India

The last mile handholding in the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP) in India is being attempted through public-private partnership business model called Common Service Centre (CSC) scheme. This brings an assortment of services to rural and deprived masses through e-government backbone and front-end delivery points for government, private and social sector services in an integrated manner. These are conceptualised as "Change Agents" that would promote rural entrepreneurship, build rural capacities and livelihoods, and enable community participation and collective action for social change-through a structured bottom-up model with focus on the rural citizen. Scheme is being implemented in a PPP Framework with a focus on rural entrepreneurship and market mechanisms wherein CSCs are to be positioned as the retail extension hubs, with no capital subsidy but guaranteed revenue support.