Monitor Modi

The Modi government’s technologyassisted surveillance of development projects is transforming governance and last-mile delivery.

- Uday Mahurkar

For Khairul Haque, a 30-year-old farm labourer from Dibu Dobak village in Assam’s Kamrup district, home used to mean a bamboo structure with a tin roof. In February this year, district officials approached him with a proposal that seemed too good to be true, a concrete house. The assistance on offer—Rs 1.3 lakh under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY) scheme. Five months on, Haque is today the proud owner of a pucca house, a dream that sounded impossible even six months ago. About 2,500 km west of Haque’s home, at Lohegaon village in Maharashtra’s Ahmednagar district, 57-year old tribal widow Shakuntala Hure has a similar story to tell. The daily wager recently shifted to a pucca house built with Rs 1.2 lakh government assistance.

Haque and Hure are just two beneficiaries whose names got flashed on the dashboards of the rural development ministry after their houses were completed. The houses were geo tagged, photographed and uploaded on the dashboard for real-time monitoring. And it’s not just the rural development ministry. Some of the other ministries which have been running social welfare schemes maintain such dashboards to make sure that deliverables and benefits reach the intended target.