MINOR IRRIGATION CENSUS PILOT, RAJASTHAN - PROJECT NOTE

The Pilot census of MI schemes in Rajasthan through mobile phones has been completed successfully.

The Pilot census took around 40 days and covered 10 districts and was carried out by around 750 field

operators working in tandem with around 45k to 60k records uploaded each day. The total no. of records

collected are 1.135 Million (11.35 lakhs). NISG is able to prove that it is possible in India to collect data

through mobile phones on real time basis.

The 'Central Monitoring System' enabled us to monitor real time data collection work and the quality of

work. This system has a unique module which enabled us to map the suspicious data to the field

supervisors for its online verification and modification (if required) with his detail comments through the

system.

BACKGROUND

The Census of Minor Irrigation Schemes being conducted by MOWR is an important contributor towards planning

for the country’s agricultural planning and hence economic growth. The Census of Minor Irrigation Schemes is

being conducted every 5 years. The ministry has so far conducted 4 such census exercises since 1986.

In its assessment of the census exercises, the department observed that the Census report is published every 4.5-

5 years after the reference year and the reliability of data collected is also not beyond doubt. Hence there is

scope for improvement in the conduct of the Census of Minor Irrigation Schemes. To identify and address these

concerns, MOWR engaged the services of NISG to study the present Census processes and suggest alternative

methodology so as to have more reliable and faster census results.

In order to re-engineer the process of Census of Minor Irrigation Schemes and explore the feasibility of using

appropriate state of the art technology intervention in the whole census process, an exercise was taken up to

study current processes, the concern areas, needs and expectations of the Ministry from MI Census. Field visits

were planned so as to ascertain ground realities from discussions with field staff and village level stakeholders like

Patwari and farmers.

The findings were categorized as key factors into two areas: Those Contributing towards Significant Time Delays

and those Contributing to Unreliability of Data. The assessment brought out many areas of Process Re–

engineering and recommendations in the Minor Irrigation Census Operations.

NISG’S TECHNOLOGY FRAMEWORK

NISG, in its report suggested that mobile phones can be used effectively to collect data from field. It has

demonstrated the feasibility of this technology framework by conducting a PoC in two villages of Haryana and

Punjab each. The POC used a mobile phone device to collect data and transmit it to Central location. The Proof of

Concept was designed in collaboration with MOWR to demonstrate the “feasibility and practicality” of NISG’s

proposed re-engineered census processes. The report was submitted in Oct 2011. Based on this report, MoWR

ordered to conduct a full- fledged Pilot in one state using this technology.

SELECTION OF PILOT STATE

MOWR decided to take up a pilot project of conducting the MI Census in one state using the technology and

methodology suggested in the Solution Design report. NISG was offered, on 13 Dec 2011, to carry out Pilot

Census of MI Schemes in one State. Finally, Rajasthan was selected as Pilot State.

PILOT

Rajasthan was selected as Pilot state then NISG tied up with a technology vendor to develop the mobile based

application. The mobiles must s have operating system as JAVA or SYMBIAN or ANDROID ver. 2.0 and above and

should have GPS & Camera functionality built in.

The paper based Schedule was translated into a mobile based form (i.e. the mobile based application) and was

used by the Field Staff to capture data.. Once a mobile based form is designed and published (on a Central

server), it is available for downloading to the mobile phone. The mobile based application was downloaded via

GPRS connectivity onto the mobile phones of the field staff before the start of the data collection work. This

mobile based application runs on low-cost JAVA/SYMBIAN/ANDROID ver. 2.0 and above -enabled mobile phones

with GPRS data connectivity

EXECUTION OF PILOT

The pilot execution strategy carried out by NISG was to select such field agencies mind that have done

such kind of work in past, they have considerable organizational presence in assigned districts.

NISG as part of strategy, stressed on training of concepts & technique for data collection. NISG with its

field vendors, organised classroom sessions for field enumerators giving them brief of project and the

concepts related to Minor Irrigation census. Later on the same group was taken to field for the hands on

training with mobile phone to give each of them a feel of real census.

NISG also followed the Train the Trainer Concept so as, those trained by NISG in classroom and field

sessions they acted as trainers to new inductees joining the census work at later stage.

CENTRAL MONITORING SYSTEM

With Central team in Delhi monitoring the data collection process through a central monitoring system,

on near real time basis. It allowed NISG personnel’s to provide effective support to the field

enumerators & supervisors. The monitoring team figured out the gaps & errors in the data uploaded on

server & conveyed them to the field personnel’s within no time.

In order to achieve greater control on ground activities, NISG central monitoring team catered to

the needs of field enumerators in terms of new User ID creation & mapping records to

supervisors for verification.

NISG was having complete control on both the data collection & supervision process and

ensured that nobody else without valid credentials authorised by NISG can temper with the

mobile solution or census data.

To provide effective project management at various levels and to various stakeholders, NISG

introduced online reports not only for ministry officials but also for field agencies. This allowed

ministry officials to get a snapshot of census work at any given point of time but also to the field

vendors whereby they could drill down to the reports of each and every enumerator. These

reports allowed the user to have the total in form of summary sheets together with details of

each & every record entered in to the system by that User.

LESSONS LEARNT IN PILOT

NISG found that the Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) were more responsive to the

NISG’s proposal of conducting state wide pilot of Minor Irrigation Scheme. NISG realized that

their approach towards the project requirements was more adaptive & efficient.

Mobile phone framework is feasible in terms of performing such large scale data collection work

NISG in its pilot project collected more than 11 lakhs of records & uploaded them to a central

server with ease.