The Government of India’s National eGovernance Plan (NeGP), since 2006, identifies Common Service Centres (CSCs) as the key access points for delivery of various e-governance and business services to citizens in rural and far-flung areas of the country. We conducted an impact assessment of the CSC e-governance Services scheme on rural communities collecting data from 1000+ Village Level Entrepreneurs (VLEs) and 5000+ citizens.

The evaluation spanned CSCs across 10 Indian states in the four regions in the country and comprised of analysis of archival VLE performance data, surveys and qualitative interviews to assess the impact as manifest in the financial viability and social impact of CSCs. 

Our results emphasize four significant findings:  

1. We find that entrepreneurial traits, notably, achievement motivation, social orientation and belief in self significantly impact performance of the VLE. Furthermore, we show that the intrinsic traits also determine these strategies chosen by the VLEs to drive the CSC operations and thereby the impact on the local communities.
2. The entrepreneur’s perception of her environment influences her achievement motivation and social orientation. These perceptions also systematically vary across states.
3. We study the effect of VLE strategies, including service mix, training provided to employees, funding model, hours of operation and marketing, and find it to impact sales performance.
4. Entrepreneurial traits determine the strategies employed by the entrepreneurs — achievement motivation positively impacts marketing investments; while social orientation and self-belief have a negative effect.