How the Internet is empowering village-level women entrepreneurs

A few years ago, Vaijanti Devi, 38, a resident of Bhusia village in Gaya district of Bihar, was an impoverished woman who couldn’t even apply for a loan. Now, after some training on using a computer, she runs a Common Service Centre (CSC) which offers online banking services, government certificates and enrols villagers for the Aadhaar identity programme.

Vaijanti is an example of how the Internet is transforming several village women into entrepreneurs and helping them make a living from providing online government services in rural and remote parts of India.

The CSC, an Internet-enabled kiosk set up through the National e-Governance Plan, empowers village-level entrepreneurs to provide citizen-centric services including access to land records and utility bill payments. These kiosks promote rural enterprise, facilitate community participation, enable citizens to make informed decisions and act as a single-window interface, eliminating corruption.
It takes very little to start such centres -- computer literacy being the only desirable qualification. The cost of hardware, such as computers and printers, and the Internet connection is usually borne by a village entrepreneur.

“I had to go through many hardships,” said Vaijanti Devi. “Illiteracy doubled my woes. Being illiterate, I was economically disadvantaged. I wanted to start a business locally but couldn’t get a loan.” Vaijanti formed a group of 10-12 women and organised monthly meetings where they would discuss their problems and try to help each other out. She got to know about the service centres and with support from an NGO, she managed to get trained and eventually opened one of her own.

Women run 18% of the 1.4 lakh Internet-enabled service centres in India today. The government’s data suggest that the centres run by women have better management and revenue sustainability than those operated by males.

“Rural people have been untouched by the digital revolution and Internet-driven services at government centres are a wonderful opportunity for people to understand the power of ICT,” said Promik Bahadur, who runs a CSC in Lucknow’s Chinhat region and earns Rs 20,000 every month. She embarked on the digital journey in 2004 with a small computer training centre in Nizampur village.

The women earn commissions on transactions made at the centre, which vary depending upon the service provided. If a person applies for a PAN card through a CSC, the commission is Rs 10, while for an Aadhaar card, it is Rs 32.

Tanya Raichura, 37, opened a CSC in Chattisgarh’s Dhamtari in 2013. She gradually transformed it into a full-service centre with services such as Aadhaar enrolment and bank accounts under the Pradhan Mantri Jan-Dhan Yojana, which caters to almost 1,000 villagers daily.

“We had to call the police as the volume of people coming to our centre was becoming unmanageable,” she said. Raichura earns enough to employ seven young women. The government plans to establish CSCs in 2.5 lakh village panchayats in two years at an estimated cost of Rs 4,750 crore.

Under the Digital India programme, “we are going to put up these centres in 2.5 lakh village blocks,” Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the first All Women Village Level Entrepreneur Conference.

About 25,000 women entrepreneurs are today running government-aided service centres and earning an income despite power and connectivity woes in rural and remote regions. Most centres now have some kind of backup for power failures.

Kallakuri Katyayani, 40, initially faced hurdles in setting up a service kiosk at Gachibowli, in Rangareddy district of Telangana. Katyayani offers 329 government-to-citizen and business-to-citizen services and has completed more than 10,000 Aadhaar enrolments. “We employ five women and are now financially sustainable,” she said.

Nuzhat Mohiduddin, 36, of Jammu & Kashmir’s Baramulla, gets almost 300 footfalls a day at her CSC as she handles services that include loan documentation, bank account opening and mobile recharges.