- The government will honour the best women VLEs who can be an example to the rest of the CSCs
- Such women VLEs would be awarded a cash prize of ₹10,000 each
- They will have a chance to travel to Silicon Valley so that they can learn how start-ups work there
Enthused by the performance of Common Service Centres (CSC), the government has asked village level entrepreneurs (VLEs) to aim for a turnover of ₹3-lakh crore in the next five years, from around ₹70,000 crore now, reported The Hindu Business Line.
CSCs, which have increased from around 83,000 in 2014 to 3.6 lakh now across India, act as access points for delivery of various services. Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister of Electronics and Information Technology, said the government intends to promote self-help groups, and added that CSC could act as a catalyst for such a movement.
Apart from routine awards everywhere to these VLEs, Prasad said the government will honour the best women VLEs who can be an example to the rest of the CSCs. He said such women VLEs would be awarded a cash prize of ₹10,000 each and also a chance to travel to the Silicon Valley (California) so that they can learn how start-ups work there.
What’s on the agenda?
Meanwhile, a number of memoranda of understandings (MoUs) were signed between CSC and corporates.
For instance, the one between CSC and the Department of Telecom (DoT) under the BharatNet project. As part of the agreement, they will conduct first line maintenance of GPON (Gigabit Passive Optical Networks) at gram panchayats and ensure last mile connectivity through Wi-Fi and fibre.
The VLE will also be made the custodian of GPON equipment in panchayats under the partnership and, in addition, the operation and maintenance of BharatNet fiber will be done through CSCs.
In addition, the CSC Academy has partnered with Facebook to jointly design and develop a digital curriculum, and provide digital training to 2.5 lakh rural entrepreneurs in over 3,000 villages.
Under this, Facebook and CSC will provide training to 5,000 women Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) in ten States — Jammu and Kashmir, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Telangana, Bihar, Kerala, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, the statement added.
CSC has also partnered with Facebook to train 2.5 lakh women entrepreneurs in digital marketing across the country. Facebook in association with 5,000 women CSC owners will help women in rural areas to leverage from various marketing tools on Facebook to increase their earnings.
Similarly, it has tied-up with HDFC for providing credit card to such small and medium entrepreneurs, to expand their businesses in rural India.
