Socio-edu survey's count crosses 100% households in 25 Karnataka districts, but with riders

As many as 25 of the 31 districts in Karnataka have crossed 100% enumeration of households during the ongoing Social and Educational survey.

This, however, is an inflated figure, as the survey hasn’t covered 100% enumeration of persons in any of the districts. There has been a discrepancy between number of households and total number of persons covered.

By Monday night, Chitradurga had the highest enumeration of 122.21% households, followed by Gadag at 119.06%, Haveri at 118.76%, Uttara Kannada at 117.2% and Koppal at 115.24%. These “inflated” numbers are the byproduct of a system of enumeration based on the RR numbers of water bills. They also include many closed UHIDs.

Backward Classes Welfare Principal Secretary Tulasi Maddineni told DH that the inflated numbers occurred due to multiple enumerations of the same house in some places.

“In their hurry to finish the enumeration, some teachers did not enumerate all the members of the house but mentioned that the houses were complete (for instance, enumerating only two persons in a household of five while showing the full household as enumeration complete). As a result, the final numbers showed more households but the corresponding number of persons was lower than expected. So, we made them revisit those houses and enumerate, which has resulted in new UHIDs, and also higher numbers,” she explained. 

As per data from the Backward Classes Commission, the UHIDs for 20.79 lakh households have been closed till Monday. Maddineni attributed this to cases where certain houses were enumerated by persons who weren’t assigned the houses.

“For example, Z’s house may have been assigned to A, but B may have enumerated it. Since the house wasn’t assigned for B, they would’ve created a new UHID and enumerated it. In such cases, the house will still come as pending for A. When the RR number will be linked to the new UHID, the original UHID assigned to A is closed as completed,” Maddineni added.

An enumerator from KR Nagar taluk in Mysuru district explained that in some houses, there could be two families and two different ration cards but there may be only one sticker. “In such cases, we create another UHID and enumerate the second family,” he added.

An enumerator from Dasarahalli in Bengaluru stated that he had completed 191 of the 294 households assigned to him. However, he added that 71 households had already been enumerated in their villages, while 23 UHIDs were those of borewells and similar facilities. “Despite explaining this, we are still being told to complete the enumeration.”  

By the end of Tuesday, five crore people were surveyed across the state (except GBA) which comes to 91.46% enumeration. In GBA limits, 44.76 lakh households were covered (31.83%).