About us

Grameen Sanchar Society, commonly known as GRASSO, is a non-profit NGO, working in rural West Bengal, India. GRASSO is an apolitical, unbiased organization run by culturally open-ended and non-ethnic group of professionals from varied background. It's mission is to transform the resourceful employed but enthusiastic rural youth into a successful network through many innovative and uniquely thought out self-employment schemes.

In Kolkata on the Feb 10, 2003, Grameen Sanchar Society , in association with Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) launched the GRASSO, Wireless in Local Loop (WLL)-based PCOs (Public call offices) in Rural Areas. This is the first time in the country that such a scheme, was inaugurated where an NGO in support with the central government behemoth like BSNL, & the state governments departments aimed at improving connectivity in the rural areas by an IT enabled integrated rural development project on the plank of existing self-employment & poverty alleviation scheme.

The Rural Will CDMA PCO Phone is to be used as a vehicle to usher in the vital connectivity that is required to spur on the telephony of both voice & data access to the people in the telephone dark areas which constitutes vast terrain where otherwise there has been sufficient developmental activity in raising the living standards in the villages.

The objectives GRASSO envisaged was to usher in a business process reengineering in the lives & livelihoods of Rural Bengal, which was producing agri products without getting remunerative prices. This stifled the growth potential of the Rural Economy. While the Panchayati Raj revolutionized land reforms in Rural Bengal it lacked the structure to accelerate growth process through the intervention of available technology.

The Rural Will CDMA PCO Phone programme is promoting community phones in villages where private telephones are still a rarity. By this process the villagers get the telephones where the cost of a telephone & it's crucial maintenance & sustenance is easily provided for by generation of revenue. BSNL is also happy with the revenues they are getting from the remote corners of Bengal each month from the existing 400 telephones of theGRASSO network.