Once, I was asked to come in. When I did as told, the head of the family set his dogs on me,” said 23-year-old Manoj Kumar, (name changed), recalling an unpleasant experience while out on fieldwork as part of the ongoing socio-economic survey by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) government in the national capital.
With little or no support from the general public and lack of adequate manpower and resources to conduct an exercise of this nature, the survey appears to be petering out before meeting its desired end.
“Over the course of my fieldwork for the survey, I visited some houses where the dwellers live in a condition, which could, at best, be described as pitiable. It was difficult to watch them living that way.
"I remember meeting an elderly couple who were in a shambles. They had been abandoned by their children and hardly had anything to eat. They did not even have a proper roof over their heads and a bed to sleep on,” Kumar said.
“It is, indeed, very difficult to summon oneself to question people when you see them in such a miserable state. Most of the time, people don’t let us in. Often, they start questioning us even when we produce our valid identification papers.
"A lot of time is spent convincing them that we mean no harm and simply want to gather some basic information as part of a government survey. At times, our respondents get combative when questioned on their income and educational qualifications,” Kumar said.
The 23-year-old, who joined the team of field surveyors in February, also rued the “practical difficulties” they face on the ground while out gathering information and data for the government.
He said despite being briefed on the issues that they routinely encounter on the job, the planning department has failed to take due note of them.
As per the rules initially set by the government, only Delhi residents and those clearing Class 12 boards would be deemed eligible to be considered for field duty.
However, the norms, this year, were revised and the condition that one has to be a city resident to be eligible for field work was dropped.
Each surveyor is given an authorised identification card, appointment letter and a list of households as per the last population census in 2011.
The houses are divided into one Enumeration Block (EB), consisting of a minimum 50 and maximum 100-120 houses.
Each surveyor is placed under a team leader, who, in most cases, is a planning department official.
The field workers are put through rigorous training on how to use the smartphone application designed for the survey and follow the questionnaire, instruction manual and other relevant documents.
“My reimbursement of Rs 8,000 is yet to be processed, as the government won’t release the amount till I complete my EB and upload all necessary details.
"However, the application designed to send the information collated from households is snail slow, as it takes no less than 10 minutes for the data collected from a single household to load. You can imagine how long it would take to send the data gathered from 50 households,” the surveyor said.
The survey, a first of its kind in the national capital initiated by the Arvind Kejriwal government in November last year, is battling a serious manpower crunch.
The survey, which was stalled during the Lok Sabha elections, resumed a month back.
The planning department, the nodal agency behind the survey, is considering sending a proposal to the cabinet requesting that further changes be brought to the terms of hiring surveyors.
Presently, 2,000 surveyors have been deployed on field duty, significantly less than the sanctioned minimum strength of 8,000.
After a cold start, the survey picked up pace in mid-February, with daily entries reaching anywhere between 10,000 and 12,000.
The field surveyors are engaged on the basis of a target-based contract with the government.
The surveyors said their respondents mostly hesitate or refuse to open up on being quizzed on their personal income, mobile numbers and educational qualifications.
They said they fared their worst in posh areas like Pandara Road, Chanakyapuri and Civil Lines, as residents here mostly turned them away or refused to share their personal details with them.
Narela and Burari are where they fared their best in terms of getting the information that they needed, the surveyors said. A planning department official confirmed the same.
As per the brief provided to the field surveyors by the government, each of them has to set a target of covering 10 households every day. The pay for gathering details on each individual is Rs 25.
“Our combined target is to cover at least one-third of the city’s population. However, this is a huge ask as covering this many households would require a lot of resources, including manpower. The problem is that the workers we have engaged need time to understand the application designed for the survey and have to undergo training from officials on what questions to pose and how.
"Also, since a lot of residents are cold to the surveyors and refuse to share information with them, the process of data gathering has slowed down,” the planning department official said.
The data collated goes directly to the portal of National Informatics Centre (NIC).
To ensure that the ‘sensitive’ data remains leak-proof, the surveyors are not allowed to store and extract data once they are submitted to the portal.
For functioning of application and management of staff, a private company has been roped in by the government.
The move to commission the survey was prompted by the death of three sisters — aged eight, four and two years — in East Delhi’s Mandawali area due to suspected malnutrition, last year.
The office of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia and AAP spokesperson Saurabh Bhardwaj did not return calls and messages till the time of filing this report.
Mining data for policy
The main objective of the project is to make available quality and reliable official data for evidence-based policy making, robust decision support system for inclusive planning and smooth implementation of government welfare schemes, ensuring and enabling the social benefits to reach the focused and targeted beneficiaries.