On April 15, 2021, The Common Services Center (CSC), the government’s e-governance services arm made a partnership with Tata Power to set up solar-powered micro grids and water pumps in rural areas across the country.
About the partnership in brief:
Objective: To provide clean and sustainable energy to households and businesses in rural areas.
Affordable Power through Micro grids:
- Under the partnership, Tata Power planned to set up 10,000 micro grids in rural areas with support from CSC’s village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs).
- The VLE’s will be trained to install and maintain the micro grinds and they also will connect the rural citizens and MSME units.
- The power generated through the micro grids will be serviced by a local entrepreneur at an affordable cost with better quality.
- Pilot program: The micro-grids has been piloted in five villages of Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh
Water Pumps:
Tata Power will also provide solar water pumps(rental) to 6000 Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs)
Employment creation:
As per the partnership, 3.75 lakh CSCs will be involved in supplying solar water pumps to farmers and help in setting up micro grids, hence it will create employment to a minimum of two persons in each panchayat and thereby which will lead to 20,000 jobs for rural youth.
Recent Related News:
On 26th March 2021, Convergence Energy Services Ltd (CESL) signed a pact with CSC e-Governance Services India Limited, a Special Purpose Vehicle (CSC SPV) to create a demand aggregation for electric mobility(e-mobility), solar, energy efficiency solutions and other initiatives of CESL.
About CSC and its structure:
It is an Information and Communication Technologies(ICT) enabled front end service delivery point, formed under the National e-Governance Plan (NeGP), in May 2006 to offer web-enabled e-governance services for G2C (government-to-citizen) and other B2C (business-to-citizen).
Managing Director of CSC- Dinesh Tyagi
The PPP structure of CSC:
The Public Private Partnership (PPP) model of CSC has a 3-tier structure
- Tier-1: The VLE – which is a CSC operator,
- Tier-2: The Service Centre Agency (SCA)- which is responsible for a division of 500-1000 CSCs, and
- Tier3: State Designated Agency (SDA) – which is responsible for managing the implementation in the entire State.
Department of Information Technology(DIT) has appointed a National Level Service Agency (NLSA) to support the SDAs and SCAs
