27-07-2025
- General
- New Indian Express
Bringing digital India into tribal hinterlands of Odisha
BHUBANESWAR: If people of tribal-dominated Chaturanjali and 13 other remote villages nearby, many not yet entirely accessible, in Mayurbhanj district are experiencing the convenience of government-to-citizen (G2C) e-services today, Manjulata Chattar has had a significant role in it.
A village-level entrepreneur of Chaturanjali, Chattar runs a common service centre (CSC) in her village that helps people of the area get access to online banking and other government services. In fact, the CSC was termed as one of the top-performing centres in the country by Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw who also felicitated Chattar with CSC Digital Seva Gaurav Samman at the CSC Diwas held in New Delhi recently.
Vaishnaw said Chattar digitally trained herself to start the CSC, which has become a lifeline for over 2,000 villagers, especially women, and marginalised communities, in the rural area of Mayurbhanj district. She provides the CSC services to villagers for free.
While the CSC was started by her husband Rajanikant Chattar in 2016, it was converted to CSC+ in 2023. 'After my marriage, my husband encouraged me to take advanced training in computer operations. Since he had already received his CSC operator ID, I wanted to help him run the centre. So, I applied for a CSC ID too, and underwent a month-long training on the Digital Seva portal to qualify as an operator,' recalled 38-year-old Chattar, who is a BA graduate from Karanjia Women's College. While the couple initially handled the CSC operations together, Chattar today runs it entirely by herself and has employed eight staff for help. Of the eight, six are girls of her village who have completed their Plus II or graduation.
