DARPAN – “Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India” launched - (21 Dec 2017)

Media and Communication

With the aim of enhancing the rural reach of the Department of Posts, the Minister of Communications launched DARPAN – “Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for A New India”. Vision behind the Project is to improve the quality of service, add value to services and achieve “financial inclusion” of un-banked rural population. DARPAN Project will provide a low power technology solution (ICT Device) to each Branch Postmaster (BPM) enabling each of approximately 1.29 lakh Extra Departmental Post Offices (EDOs) to improve the level of services being offered to rural customers.

Banking solutions to the un-bank rural population would be provided. Rural postal life insurance would be available to the citizens in rural part of the country. During the launch, Minister of Communication said that, 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” project with the aim of financial inclusion to rural population and it is targeted to complete the project by March, 2018.

The Rural Information Communication Technology (RICT) Project, a part of IT modernisation project, is named as DARPAN - Digital Advancement of Rural Post Office for a New India. The vision of Digital India programme is to transform India into a digitally empowered society. DARPAN Project supports the vision by providing the financial services and citizens benefit schemes as old age pension, MNREGS etc. digitally to the citizens in the interior areas of the country through the applications like CBS, Micro ATM, eMO and many more.

The Department of Posts (DoP) has been providing communication services in the country for more than 150 years and has played a significant role in the country’s socio-economic development. It connects the lives of Indian citizens in many ways such as 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 has the most widely distributed postal network in the world. Urbanization, increased demand for financial services, increased funding by the government for the weaker sections and the rural sector, 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 best services to customers, 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.

Tags : DARPAN LAUNCH DIGITAL ADVANCEMENT