Time to create comprehensive databases for enabling development

Localising the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals is the need of the hour

Data has become a buzzword today. There are strong reservations being voiced about the Draft Data Protection Bill of 2021 and also the proposed Data Accessibility Policy. Many fears about data being misused and privacy being violated are genuine and need to be addressed.

But those threats of possible misuse do not preclude the need for maintaining a single, accurate database of citizens without which governments cannot provide citizens the benefits they are entitled to. Consider the multiple ways data is being collected currently by various departments, leading to duplication and lack of coherence between the databases and repeated submission of the same data by citizens.

Data is collected by the Food Department for issuing ration cards, the Revenue Department for providing pensions, the Education Department of all children to ensure that all of them go to school, booth-level officers to prepare the electoral roll, and now by the E-Shram portal to register all unorganised workers.

These exercises are repeated again and again as there is no provision for keeping them up-to-date on a continuous basis. Then there is the data collected by the decennial Census or the Socio-Economic Caste Census.

A rainbow in this woeful scenario is the initiative of the Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms (DPAR) of Karnataka which has conceived the idea of a Family ID project called ‘Kutumba’ and created a digitised comprehensive database of over one crore families of Karnataka, covering more than 5.5 crore persons. This family data is supposed to enable the computer itself to identify eligible citizens for various schemes so that benefits can be automatically disbursed in a suo motu manner “without the citizens having to even apply”.

Another bright spark is the suggestion made by the recent report of Karnataka’s Second Administrative Reforms Commission (KARC-2) to use the ubiquitous post offices to provide government services. Can post offices become the repositories, municipal ward-wise and GP-wise, of the decennial Census or Socio-Economic Census data, integrated with the Family ID data and property ID of the address? This single database can be continuously updated with information about births and deaths and in and out-migration of citizens from the area. Post offices are the ones that are informed first by citizens voluntarily anyway when they are shifting their address.

But currently, furnishing data for the Family ID is voluntary. But in many other countries, there are laws on ‘Compulsory Registration’ where the onus is on the citizens to mandatorily register themselves at the community/municipal office in the area they are resident in, and to inform any change in their location also mandatorily. These laws also have strict provisions on who can access these databases, with whom they can be shared, in what manner, etc. This continuously updated single database is used as the mother data for varying purposes.

Has the time come to make similar registration mandatory at GP/ward level in our country of 1.3 billion, no doubt incorporating adequate safeguards for data privacy? This single database can be used for generating birth and death certificates, electoral rolls, ration cards, IDs for workers, lists of social security beneficiaries, children eligible for compulsory schooling and scholarships, etc., in the GP/ward, without demanding data from citizens repeatedly.

While this family database serves the purpose of identifying persons for individual benefits, another much-needed database is that of the status of human development and social infrastructure in a ward/GP to serve as the basis for Ward/GP development planning.

Not much awareness exists on ‘Mission Antyodaya’, introduced in the Union Budget in 2017-18, which appears to serve this purpose. It requires an annual survey to be conducted in GPs across the country as part of the People’s Plan Campaign (PPC) to enable evidence-based, participatory planning for the Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP).

The survey data are to be used to assess the gap in each GP in terms of infrastructure, access to basic amenities and the overall socio-economic and human development, and these gaps have to be addressed in the GPDP. A Comprehensive Special Gram Sabha (GS) is to be conducted in all GPs as part of the PPC for GPDP. The GS has to classify the gaps in three broad categories – (i) Critically Important, (ii) High Priority and (ii) Desirable.

However, ‘Mission Antyodaya’ currently applies only to rural areas. It is time to extend it to urban areas considering that there are no guidelines on how a municipal ‘Ward Development Plan’ (WDP) should be developed.

In Bengaluru, for instance, ad hoc measures are being adopted by NGOs to draw upward plans which do not fulfil the requirements of an evidence-based planning exercise to meet the needs of the marginalised.

There may be a primary school in the ward, but is it fulfilling all the norms spelt out in the RTE Act for toilets, drinking water, teachers, classrooms, playgrounds? A Primary Healthcare Centre may be available, but is it functioning with the full strength of doctors and staff, testing facilities and medicines as per Indian public health standards?

Localising the achievement of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by these measures is the need of the hour.

(The writer is Executive Trustee of CIVIC-Bangalore)