After creating a network of 1300 Common Services Centres (CSCs) to deliver various services electronically to people of Kashmir, the officials overlooking the scheme say that the government is destroying the “much needed” network by ordering frequent internet blackouts.

The officials said that more than a thousand centres in Kashmir are left defunct when internet services are snapped. They said that for the past many years they had been creating the network and had set up centres even in far-flung areas of the Valley, but the internet bans have almost destroyed their purpose.

The CSC scheme, an initiative of the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, government of India, was aimed to provide high-quality and cost-effective services to people in the areas of e-governance, education, health, telemedicine, entertainment, as well as some private services.

State project manager of the scheme, Asif Iqbal, told Kashmir Reader that on the one hand the government is asking people to go digital, and on the other hand it is making it “impossible” to do so.

“Except a minuscule percent that have broadband services, all other CSC centres in the Valley are disconnected once the internet is banned by the government. The helplessness during such internet bans creates an impression of non-reliability of online services and of the CSC centres themselves,” said Iqbal.