Evaluating National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme In India: A Dynamic Rural Survey Method Using Mobile Phones

CPRSouth 6, Janani Rangarajan, Rajesh Kumar, Sriram Narayanamurthy, Dr.Ashok Jhunjhunwala, Suma PrashantDec 9-10, 2011

Overview of National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS)

About Technology for Evaluation of the Scheme – Mobile Interface to Enterprise Database: MINED

Method of Evaluation

Challenges while using Mobile Technology for Evaluation

Key Findings and Policy Recommendations

NREGA ACT: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, covering over 800 million people, is one of the world’s largest social welfare scheme aimed at poverty alleviation in rural areas by guaranteeing hundred days of wage-employment in a financial year to a rural household whose adult members are willing to do unskilled manual work.

UNDP sponsored audit was done by RTBI: Continuous audit is an integral part of NREGS which requires a simple procedure

Sample: A total of 600 NREGS workers from 5 districts and 40 villages constituted the sample. Sample based on random sampling

Automation Software for the audit survey conducted using mobile phones: Mobile Interface to Enterprise Database(MINED):

MINED is a unique interfacing technology which is used for data collection through an inexpensive mobile connected over GPRS to the enterprise database.

Why MINED? Data to be collected from a large area (remote villages) in a short

period of time Usual method consumes paper and time Synchronizes data between handset and back end instantaneously Allows alteration/removal/ introduction of questions mid stream Collected data is tamper proof No data loss and data misinterpretation

A total of 72 questions in Tamil, font used was SaiIndra

Each screen could accommodate around 5-7 questions and 10-12 screens per questionnaire

were used

Drop down options for all the questions were provided

July 2009

NREGA- Live Sample Data Upload in multiple languages

Language: Mobile phones could not support Tamil fonts

This was overcome by using Universal Text Format (UTF) 8 in all the mobile phones

Field Size: Tamil fonts occupied more space than the 32 bytes allocated for English fonts by default

The field size of the answers was increased in order to ensure that the full answer to a question was accommodated 

Mode of conducting: A challenge initially

No provision for subjective answers

Emotions could not be captured

Live update and Real time data analysis

Flexibility of changing questions

Accurate data

Cost effective and saves time

Scalable and supports vernaculars