Nasscom awards: Technology for social good
only individuals and organisations, even government agencies have now woken up to the use of technology in keeping up with various social development schemes. One of the biggest such schemes in India is the mid-day meal scheme, feeding millions of children everyday. In Uttar Pradesh alone, the mid-day meal scheme serves no less than 1.3 crore children on a daily basis. And ensuring that all these children get their meals would be a mega project in itself. This year’s UNICEF Special Recognition awardee at NSIH is none other than the Mid-Day Meal Authority (MMA) of the UP government.
Sudhanshu Tripathi, Finance Controller, MMA, UP, puts it thus: “For such programmes, the implementation is done by the gram panchayats. If we were collecting data manually, for it to reach from the grassroots level (school) to the apex level of authority (MMA) would take a month. What’s the point of ascertaining whether a child got to eat a month ago?” So, they devised a method wherein a virtual call would be placed to the school teachers after lunchtime everyday, and all that he or she has to do is to key in the number of students fed on that particular day. So, through these calls made to 1.5 lakh schools in the state, they are able to collect real-time data on an everyday basis.
Tripathi explains, “Since teachers have no involvement in the implementation of the scheme, talking to them entails independent verification of the work being done by the gram panchayats.
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