After a month the Supreme Court was informed that the Common Service Centres (CSCs) would be taken into account to register the rural population for vaccination on the Co-Win platform. However, around 3 lakh CSCs account that has registered people stand less than 0.5 per cent of the total number registered.
Out of the 28.5 crore people who got themselves registered till June 12, only 14.25 lakh had registered through the CSCs, reported news publication The Indian Express.
Though the number of registration done by the CSCs has seen a slight increase, it still shows the gap between Urban and Rural India, raising doubts on vaccine equity.
About 54,460 CSCs were active till May 11 and had just got 1.7 lakh, people, to register for the vaccination which accounts for 0.1 per cent of the over 17 crores who got themselves listed for vaccination across the country till then.
Deliberating more on why the vaccine registration process is slow in the rural areas, a village-level entrepreneur (VLE) operating a CSC in Haryana said: “If we ask people to register for vaccination, they ask us if vaccines are available, and then tell us that they will return when there are vaccines. We have to live with them so we don’t push them too much to register”.
The Ministry of Information and Technology officials have also stated that vaccine shortage news had penetrated down to the remotest and lowest levels of villages in India, though they were confident that the registration will speed up once the vaccine supplies are restored.
Vaccine hesitancy, various myths going around are major factors that people are reluctant to register and take the Covid vaccine. With constant campaigning, the confusion about the shot pricing has almost gone.
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“But how does one convince people that taking the vaccine will not make them impotent,” said an official.
As per news data till 12 June, CSCs in Uttar Pradesh has done the highest number of registrations so far. With the highest number of villages, Uttar Pradesh registered 5,18,422 people on the Co-Win platform, followed by Punjab, which had enrolled 77,303.
The rural areas in Union Territories have noted more marginalisation. The CSCs in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, and Ladakh registered only 57, 10, 39, 58 and 68 people respectively.
While smaller states such as Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Nagaland also happened to record bad numbers, with their CSCs registering just 165; 1,165; 1,350; 1,258; and 1,582 people respectively. As many as 6.57 lakh, 5.43 lakh, 5.16 lakh, 3.57 lakh and 3.48 lakh people were vaccinated (at least one dose each) in these states respectively.
What are CSCs - Common Service Centres?
The IT ministry manages and operates the CSCs are critical branches of the government that try to put efforts to bridge the rural-urban digital divide.
These gram-panchayats and village-level stations are stations established for rural dwellers with digital services like applying for an Aadhaar card, passport, permanent account number (PAN) card, or opening of bank accounts.
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Amongst these services, approximately only 1.4 lakh of the active CSCs have got a permit to start operations as grameen e-stores, which allows them to place orders to big fast-moving consumer goods companies directly.