Following this, it will rope in village-level entrepreneurs (VLEs) to set up water filtration plants in one lakh villages in the country. This will be the government’s first such initiative after Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 16 June 2019 announced setting up a target to provide clean drinking water to all by 2024.

CSC has inked a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) for installing water filtration plants in villages. BARC has indigenously developed various water filtration techniques. CSCs through their VLEs will set up these filtration plants in rural areas.

The government will initially begin with a pilot project for 50 villages. After this, CSC will work with VLEs to set up plants in around 50,000 villages. Another 50,000 villages will be added later. The first tranche is from the villages where BARC has to provide the filtration plants. Rest will come from other stakeholder ministries. The full plant set-up costs around Rs four lakh.

The agency has developed various technologies to filter water and make it safe for drinking. The pilot project will probably be launched by July 2019. After this, installation of water filtration plants in 50,000 villages will start in phases.

CSCs were formed as part of the government’s National e-Governance Plan (NeGP). They are ICT-enabled front-end service delivery points for villages providing the government, financial, social and private sector services in agriculture, health, education, entertainment, FMCG products, banking, insurance, pension, utility payments, etc. At present, there are over three lakh CSCs in the country with over 2.5 lakh in villages.

These centres work under the CSC e-governance Services India, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) set up by the IT Ministry.