Key Highlights
- Provides high‑speed broadband to roughly 20 lakh rural families.
- Creates 8,000‑10,000 local Digital Service Providers (DSPs) as village‑level entrepreneurs.
- Targets more than 1 lakh direct and indirect jobs, especially for women and youth.
- Links villages to e‑education, tele‑medicine, e‑governance and market platforms.
- Phased rollout – first 21 districts, with plans to expand statewide.
Detailed Insights
In August 2023, Uttar Pradesh's Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath inaugurated Project Ganga, a state‑wide programme designed to eliminate the digital divide in rural areas. The scheme relies on a network of locally owned Digital Service Providers, who will install and maintain broadband infrastructure, deliver internet access, and offer value‑added digital services such as online schooling, remote health consultations, and government form filing.
The Hinduja Group, through its OneOTT Entertainment arm, has been appointed as Knowledge Partner and Implementation Enabler, operating on a “no profit, no loss” basis. This public‑private partnership ensures technical expertise while keeping the model financially sustainable for the government.
A crucial component of the initiative is the integration with the CM Yuva Scheme, which offers interest‑free loans up to ₹5 lakh for eligible youth to start their DSP ventures. The scheme explicitly aims for gender parity, with the expectation that half of the DSP beneficiaries will be women, thereby fostering economic independence and broader social inclusion.
Project Ganga’s phased approach allows authorities to assess performance, refine deployment strategies, and scale the network to all 75 districts of Uttar Pradesh, ultimately creating a digitally empowered rural economy.
Key Concepts
- Digital Service Provider (DSP): A village‑based entrepreneur responsible for setting up broadband infrastructure and delivering internet‑enabled services to surrounding households.
- Last‑mile connectivity: The final segment of the telecom network that reaches individual homes or small community centers, often the most challenging and costly portion to implement.
- CM Yuva Scheme: A state‑sponsored youth empowerment programme that supplies interest‑free loans to young entrepreneurs for establishing small‑scale businesses, now extended to support DSPs.
- No‑Profit‑No‑Loss model: A partnership arrangement wherein the private partner recovers only actual costs, avoiding profit margins, to prioritize public welfare.
- Digital inclusion: The process of ensuring all segments of society, regardless of geography or gender, have equitable access to digital technologies and the benefits they generate.