The Telangana Government is planning to convert 8,650 panchayat offices in the state into mini banks and mini insurance service centres in phased manner. The state has embarked on a project to transform panchayats into e-panchayats or digital panchayat centres to provide all the government-to-citizen (G2C) services over the Internet to the villagers. “Besides providing citizen services online, these centres would also act as business correspondents, giving people access to a some banking activities.” said Jayesh Ranjan, secretary IT, government of Telangana. All these centres will be managed only by women.
He said Government had a plan to add more services to the eGovernance delivery service of Mee Seva to take the total number of services to 400. At present 320 services are available online. “ This is part of the scheme to make available certain service ‘only online’ and to avoid all physical interface with government officials,” he added.
Telangana had a huge target of making at least one person from each family digitally literate, the IT secretary said and added that the government would soon begin digital literacy program from Class VI to catch them young. As the number of smart-phone users was on the rise, the government was also planning to develop some mobile apps to provide easy access to the proposed G2C services, he said.
Stating that at present these services are available in 100 villages since October 2, when the program was launched, the IT secretary said efforts were afoot to take the G2C service to 1000 villages by January 16, 2016 by setting up Digital Panchayat Centres and trained rural women would handle them.
Each centre will be provided with a PCs, laptop, printer, scanner and large-size LED TVs by spending Rs 2.5 lakh.
The high point of the program is that even commercial banks are interested to join hands with e-panchayat system. The banks are studying possibility of converting these Centres into their rural branches as many of them don’t have branches in rural areas, where account holders can transact business with the bank with the help of the women handling the centres. According to Jayesh Ranjan State Bank of Hyderabad, Andhra Bank, Telangana Gramina Bank have already extended their services at the 100 centres on pilot basis.
