DARPAN LAUNCHED FOR FINANCIAL INCLUSION
OF RURAL POPULATION
The
Minister of Communications Shri Manoj Sinha today launched DARPAN – “Digital
Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India”
Project to improve the quality of service, add value to services and achieve
“financial inclusion” of un-banked rural population. He said, the goal of the
IT modernization project with an outlay of Rs. 1400 Crore is to provide a low
power technology solution to each Branch Postmaster (BPM) which will enable
each of approximately 1.29 Lakhs Branch Post Offices (BOs) to improve the level
of services being offered to rural customers across all the states. Shri Sinha
said that as on date, 43,171 Branch Post Offices have migrated under the “DARPAN”projectwith
the aim of financial inclusion to rural population and it is targeted to
complete the project by March, 2018.
The Project
shall increase the rural reach of the Department of Posts and enable BOs to
increase traffic of all financial remittances, savings accounts, Rural Postal
Life Insurance, and Cash Certificates; improve mail operations processes by
allowing for automated booking and delivery of accountable article; increase
revenue using retail post business; provide third party applications; and make
disbursements for social security schemes such as MGNREGS.
As part of IT
modernization project, the Department of Posts (DoP) has carried out business
process reengineering across various functional areas and has created To-Be
processes that will enable it to achieve these objectives. As an achievement,
Department of Posts has established 991 ATMs across the country, which are
interoperable with other banks and the common people has directly benefited
with the wide network of Department of Posts especially in rural areas. Till
now, 1,12,85,217 transactions have been carried out on the DOP’s ATMs out of
which 70,24,214 transactions have been done by the non-DOP customers.
Department of Posts is the only Government player in this space.
For more than
150 years, the Department of Posts (DoP) has been the backbone of the country’s
communication and has played a crucial role in the country’s socio-economic
development. It touches the lives of Indian citizens in many ways: delivering
mails, accepting deposits under Small Savings Schemes, providing life insurance
cover under Postal Life Insurance (PLI) and Rural Postal Life Insurance (RPLI)
and providing retail services like bill collection, sale of forms, etc. The
Department of Posts also acts as an agent for Government of India in
discharging other services for citizens such as Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) wage disbursement and old age pension
payments. With 1.5 lakh Post Offices (approximately), the Department of Posts
has the most widely distributed postal network in the world.
Trends such as
urbanization, increased demand for financial services, increased funding by the
government for the weaker sections and the rural sector, have opened up new
opportunities for the Department of Posts,which in turn has necessitated
development of new processes and supporting technology. The Department of Posts
is also faced with twin challenges of increasing competition and continuing
advances in communication technology, especially in mobile telephony and the
Internet. In order to provide the best-in-class customer service, deliver new
services and improve operational efficiencies,the Department of Posts has
undertaken an end to end IT modernization project to equip itself with requisite
modern tools and technologies. The IT modernization project intends to achieve
the following:
- Wider reach to
the Indian populace through more customer interaction channels
- Better customer
service
III. Growth through new lines
of business
1.
IT enablement of business processes and
support functions
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Read more at : https://www.indiapost.gov.in/VAS/Pages/News/Darpan.pdf
Source : http://www.business-standard.com/
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