Baleswar MP RK Jena met Tata Trusts Chairman Ratan Tata in Mumbai to extend thank him personally on behalf of the people of Baleswar for data-driven governance in district.
“Tata Trusts also promised to help Baleswar for various social initiatives in key sectors. It was inspiring to learn from Ratan Tata about how he assembled a high-performance team which collaborates and works with people with common interests across the country,” said Jena .
“By common interests, he meant people who are passionate to create an impact on the grassroots and are willing to work towards changing lives of people around,” he said.
It may be noted following initiative of Jena, the Tata Trusts has undertaken a massive work in Baleswar.
The team members under the trusts headed by Nikhita Nadkarni , have been making door- to- door to baseline survey in the district. During the exhaustive survey, they noted actual ground position including the socio economic condition . In the first phase, while they undertook two blocks Basta and Baliapal, the data was collected by spending 6 lakh man hours between March and May.
Population , land or landless , types of house( kuchha/pucca), road , drinking water ,electricity, toilet , school facilities and the source of livelihood etc. were data collected by the team during the survey .
After receipt of the data, it was placed before the district administration, where line department officials were present. Those data when compared with the Socio Economic Caste Census (SECC) conducted by the State Government, a lot of gaps were found between them.
For example in the case of construction of toilets, different figures were found between the Trust and SECC.
RWSS Executive Engineer Rajib Panigrahi said, “We carried out works basing on the SECC survey made in 2011 where as the Tata Trust conducted survey in the current months. So there could be gaps.”
It was decided in the meeting that a joint team comprising members of the Trust and Government officials would make snap check in some villages and see whether there was a gap. “The objective of the survey by the Tata Trusts is to do social mapping and then implement the village development plan. The data has given a real ground picture. The intervention would be made through convergence of different schemes of the Government,” said Jena.
It may be noted that Baleswar district is the fourth district of the Tata Trust to carry out such type of survey. Earlier, it carried out survey in one each district in Maharashtra, AP and Jharkhand .