“

Palnar village in the naxal-affected Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh has emerged as a champion for the cause of digital literacy and empowerment. A small village with a population of 1,961 people has shown high levels of enrolment following an outreach campaign `DigiDhan Abhiyanâ launched by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY).  

Here, the Common Service Centre (CSC) â e-seva kendras — along with a team of bankers, district officials and technical officials met the citizens of the village and trained them through various audio/ video material on digital transformation and benefits of digital adoption. The meetings were conducted at the Gram Panchayat Bhawan at Palnar to educate and convince the merchants and people to adopt Digital payments.

The teams also demonstrated the procedure of obtaining Point-of-Sale (POS) for merchants and the usage for the villagers during the meetings and training sessions. The villagers were also shown videos of various digital methods like Unified Payment Interface (UPI), Unstructured Supplementary Service Data (USSD) to get them to understand the systems better. The teams also extended their support to the merchants by enabling then in getting the Point-of-Sale (PoS) from the banks and were also given training on the usage.

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) rural Common Service Centre (CSC) network through its massive outreach campaign `DigiDhan AbhiyanâÂÂ, aims to reach over 1 Crore (10 million) rural citizens through this massive outreach program. The campaign aims to cover 2 lakh Common Service Centres (CSC) across the rural areas and enable them to become Digital Financial Education hubs. The CSCs will train people about the various digital financial solutions and also enable them to use various modes of Electronic Payment Systems (EPS). The campaign also aims to sensitize merchants and vendors on the use of EPS. The campaign will look to provide people with a multitude of choices, so that they can choose the method basis its relevance and comfort for them. The focus will be on creating an enabling environment and identify solutions for all segments of the population who want to go digital. It will be a combination of physical outreach through the Common Service Centres (CSC) and Digital Tools.

Apart from various training sessions for merchants and villagers, the Common Service Centres (CSC) also opened a shopping complex to keep coordinating with the newly enabled cashless merchants & villagers. The Common Service Centres are also acting as micro ATM for the villagers through its successful module of âÂÂApna dhanâÂÂ. With all of the activities and initiatives through the Common Service Centres (CSC), the village saw a complete turn-around and has gone digital with the use of e-Wallets, and Cards, Point-of-Sale (PoS) machines.”