Why in News ?

Department of Posts has launched a scheme called Five Star Villages, to ensure universal coverage of flagship postal schemes in rural areas of the country.

About Five Star Villages Scheme

• Scheme seeks to bridge the gaps in public awareness and reach of postal products and services focused on the interior of the villages.
• Under the Five Star Villages scheme all product and services are made available at the village level.
• The schemes covered under the Five Star scheme include:
  • Savings Bank accounts, Recurrent Deposit Accounts, NSC / KVP certificates
  • Sukanya Samridhi Accounts/ PPF Accounts
  • Funded Post Office Savings Account linked India Post Payments Bank Accounts
  • Postal Life Insurance Policy/Rural Postal Life Insurance Policy
  • Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana Account / Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana Account.
• Process of providing star
  • Once it achieve all the five aims it will get Five star status
• The scheme will be implemented by a team of five Gramin Dak Sevaks who will be assigned a village for marketing of all products, savings and insurance schemes of the Department of Posts.
  • Team will be headed by the Branch Post Master of the concerned Branch Office.
• Team of Gramin Dak Sevaks will conduct door-to-door awareness campaign on all schemes, covering all eligible villagers.
• Training and infrastructure, covering all schemes, would be provided to all branch offices in identified villages.
  • Monthly progress will be reviewed by the Chief Post Master General.

Post Office in India

• With 1, 55,531 Post Offices, the DoP has the most widely distributed postal network in the world.
• DoP 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
  • Old age pension payments.
• Postal service in India works as a bank, pension fund, primary savings instrument and delivery service.
• Since the beginning of lockdown on March 23 its network of 1,54,000 post offices to help poor Indians access cash benefits to lifesaving medicines, when all transport and services came to a standstill.
• Launched Project Arrow in 2008, to modernise Indian Post and run it as a pan-India network.
  • This was not effective.

Source : PIB

Topic

Prelims : About Five Star Villages Scheme

GS II : Government policies and interventions for development in various sectors and issues arising out of their design and implementation

Current Affairs Compilation : 11 September 2020