HYDERABAD: The Economic Survey, which was tabled in the Parliament on Thursday, lauded the efforts of Telangana’s initiative ‘Samagra Vedika’, by which the State collected data and integrated it with various departments. The basis for the Samagra Vedika is Samagra Kutumba Survey (SKS), an integrated household survey which was carried out in 2014. Under the chapter ‘Data of the People, By the People, For the People’, the economic survey compared Telangana’s data with that of the United Kingdom and the United States of America.
Special Chief Secretary and Director General of MCRHRD BP Acharya played the key role in collecting the data for SKS. “I am very happy that the economic survey mentioned Telangana’s Samagra Vedika, which is nothing but the integration of the data collected in SKS with all the departments. SKS is a goldmine of data. When the data is integrated with all the departments, it is called Samagra Vedika,”
Acharya explained and added that they were able to conduct the SKS with the support of Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao. The economic survey presented in the Parliament stressed the need to learn from the best practices in force across the world. While noting the salient features of the data by the UK and the USA, the survey gave another box highlighting the data collected by Telangana.
“Data pertaining to Transport in London and the data collected by the US are comparable to that of Telangana State, which could be found out from the Samagra Vedika initiative by the Government of Telangana,” the report said.
Under the title ‘Federalism in learning among governments: Telangana Government’s Samagra Vedika initiative’, the economic survey stated: “The Samagra Vedika initiative gives a flavour of the potential benefits of integrating data sets. The initiative links around 25 existing government datasets using a common identifier - the name and address of an individual.”
It adds, “Seven categories of information about each individual were linked - crimes, assets, utilities, subsidies, education, taxes and identity information. Each individual was then further linked to relatives such as spouse, siblings, parents and other known associates. The initiative also puts in place all the necessary safeguards to preclude any tampering of data or violation of privacy. The right to add or edit data in the database varies by ministry or department. A given department can only write data for select fields - the motor vehicles department cannot, for instance, manipulate data relating to education, even though it can view the data”.
State’s Services sector growth highest in country
According to the latest economic survey, Telangana stands first in terms of services sector growth, among all the states in the country. The State’s services sector growth was 10.7 per cent, followed by Karnataka with 10.5 per cent. The Services Sector share in gross state value added (GSVA) in 2017-18 in Telangana was 63.2 per cent. With regard to services sector share in GSVA, the State stood in sixth place. However, growth-wise considered, Telangana State is in the number one position
In agri sector, ts leads only in cotton production
Despite the several pro-farmer measures taken up by the State government, Telangana is not the top State when it comes to the agriculture industry, except in the case of cotton. Telangana has not figured in any ‘top lists’ in terms of foodgrain production. The State found itself in the top three positions only with regard to cotton, in a section titled ‘Production of Important Crops in Three Largest Producing States in 2017-18’. The largest cotton-producing State is Gujarat with 12.64 million bales. This was followed by Maharashtra with 6.55 million bales