Maha to conduct survey to ensure scheme benefits to villagers

In order to upgrade the quality and standard of living in rural areas, Maharashtra government in collaboration with Tata Trusts, would conduct an extensive survey, collecting household data of villagers to ensure that actual beneficiaries gain from the Centre and state schemes.
A pilot project in this regard will be launched from Maharashtra Finance Minister Sudhir Mungantiwar's home district Chandrapur.
"It has been seen that many a times, actual beneficiaries of Centre and state schemes do not get the benefits meant for them due to loopholes in the system. It was thus decided to conduct a household survey with help from Tata Trusts," an official from the state Finance department said.

"Before launching the survey across Maharashtra, it has been decided to start a pilot project in Chandrapur district," he added.
The project will first start from Pombhurna, Mul and Jivati blocks of Chandrapur district.
A total of 115 Gram Panchayats, 290 Revenue villages and approximately 47,774 households will be covered, targeting a population of 197,410.

A Tata spokesperson said, "We will support the implementation of the micro planning process of the programme in collaboration with the district-level administration of Chandrapur.
The Trusts endeavour is to collect this data in order to consolidate a complete database so that the communities can receive the full benefit of government welfare. The program will be implemented in five stages: pre-planning, planning, implementation, reporting and closure."

The spokesperson said that providing support in the micro-planning process of the programme includes creation of dashboard to monitor real time data base, intensive digital data collection covering every household in the village and linking all available schemes of State and Centre to every household level in order to achieve these objectives.
Tata Trusts in a statement said the end objective of the
programme is to improve basic amenities to enhance human development, create livelihood opportunities while boosting productivity, enriching social capital while reducing disparities between various sections of society and ensuring access to rights & entitlement to all, by encouraging wider social inclusiveness and mobilisation.

Mungantiwar said that once the government receives data of all villages, it will be easier to implement schemes.
"The aim of this programme is to bring rural families to the mainstream for their development, remove loop holes in the existing system and real beneficiaries should get the benefits of government schemes," he said.
"Once we get the database of all villages, it will be easier to implement schemes. There are 155 questions which every family has to fill up in the form. We want that every scheme should reach beneficiaries," he said.