Minister: 100 BPO centres in Bihar soon

PATNA: Union law and information technology (IT) minister Ravi Shankar Prasad on Saturday said 100 new business process outsourcing (BPO) centres would be opened at 100 common service centres (CSCs) already operational in the state soon.
The minister, who launched the 10-day Dr B R Ambedkar birth anniversary celebrations at a city hotel, said a digital village would be opened in every district. “The government will also launch a special digital training programme for scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribe (ST) communities,” he said.

“The 2.91 lakh CSCs in the country, manned by digitally trained village level entrepreneurs (VLEs), have provided employment opportunities to people under the Digital India programme of the Centre. The VLEs also include women and people from SC and ST communities. The government has decided to give a cash reward of Rs 1 lakh to the best performing VLE from this year,” the minister added.

Prasad said 100 new BPOs would be opened at CSCs, especially in rural areas, under the Centre’s PM Gram Digital Saksharta Abhiyan (PMGDISHA) programme. “Each BPO will accommodate five to 10 digitally trained women. The aim is to empower women, SC and ST groups through Digital India programme,” Prasad said. He added that apart from the existing BPOs at Patna, Muzaffarpur and Katihar, the new ones will be opened at Samastipur, Jehanabad and Gaya.

The minister said altogether 22,613 CSCs are operational in the state, including 14,213 in rural areas of the state. “VLEs, including digitally trained women, have been rendering services to people and also earning money,” he added.

The programme was conducted by digitally trained dalit woman Baijanti Devi, a resident of Bhusia village, 30km away from Bodh Gaya. The audience included 300 dalit VLEs from across the state. Three BJP MLAs – Arun Kumar Sinha, Nitin Navin and Sanjeev Chaurasia – hailed Baijanti in their speeches.

Prasad said 1.12 crore people have already been made digitally literate in the country under PMGDISHA programme against the target of 6 crore people. The trained people include 23 lakh SCs and 1.5 lakh STs. “In Bihar, the number digitally trained people has touched 8.02 lakh, including 2 lakh from SC and ST groups. The Centre is implementing the Digital India programme to fulfil the dream and vision of Ambedkar,” he added.