Tuesday, Aug 19, 2014

Hyderabad: History of sorts was created on Tuesday in Telangana with the government conducting the biggest ever intensive household survey on a single day collecting data of each and every household in all the 10 districts.

Greater Hyderabad, the state capital with a 12-million population, wore a deserted look as normally busy and congested roads were empty.

With nobody and no vehicles on the roads, all shops and hotels closed, a curfew-like situation prevailed. Right from the old city around Charminar to the Hitec City, the hub of information technology, all the busy centres were quiet.

It was first time in the country that such a survey was being conducted in a single day to make it comprehensive and also close the door on the possibility of any manipulation and distortion of data.

An estimated 400,000 enumerators — among them government employees, teachers, policemen and other volunteers — started the house to house survey in Hyderabad and other districts early in the morning and the work was likely to continue late into the night.

The survey form in three languages — Telugu, Urdu and English — had questions regarding personal information like number of family members, name, age, education, house details, electricity, water and gas connection, employment status, details of properties. It also had optional questions like Income Tax details, bank or post office accounts.

In a determined bid to help efforts to collect accurate data from all the households, the Telangana government announced a general holiday to enable people to take part in the survey.

Apart from the government offices and educational institutions, all other establishments — banks, petrol pumps, cinema halls, shops and markets — remained closed. Hotels also declared a holiday.

The government had also declared that no buses would ply during the day. With taxis and auto rickshaws off the roads, the people coming from outside faced a lot of difficulties. Though trains and flights were operating, it was not easy for passengers to reach the stations and airport.

So massive was the build-up to the survey that an estimated two million people left Hyderabad for their native places to be available to the enumerators.

Government’s explanation that there was no need for them to go back to their hometowns or villages and they can given information wherever they were came a bit late.

Leading from the front, to allay the fears of misuse of data, Telangana Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao also participated in the survey and provided details of his family, assets and bank accounts.

His cabinet colleagues, Chief Secretary, state police chief and other officials also participated in the exercise.

“The survey is not against anybody but it is only to develop a correct database to ensure that the benefits of welfare schemes reach deserving people”, KCR said.

Another senior minister, T. Harish Rao, who was in Siddipet to register his family said, “all the future welfare programmes will be based on the data of this survey. It has given a new hope to the people. Only some vested interests were opposing the survey,” he said.

Though each family had to fill three pages of data, the progress of the survey was quiet brisk and half the work was done by 2pm.

Officials said they faced some challenges at various places like shortage of printed forms and presence of more households than earlier expected.

Though official records show that the state has nearly 10 million households, the Telangana state government has said this is an exaggerated and incorrect number, and the real number was around 8.4 million only.

In the old city of Hyderabad, some areas witnessed slow progress as there was confusion regarding the house numbers — with several sharing a single number.

In Hyderabad every enumerator was given 40 house numbers, only to find out on the ground that even an apartment complex with 75 to 100 flats also had a single number.

With a majority of Urdu speaking population, Telugu enumerators faced a lot of problems and there was a communication gap.

In Warangal enumerators refused to survey more than the assigned number of houses and demanded more enumerators to be sent to cover the remaining houses.

In Mahbubnagar district five revenue inspectors were suspended for not giving correct numbers of houses, which created problems in survey.

By Mohammad Siddique ?Correspondent

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