Technical session II

END-USER RESPONSES

CONVERGENCE OF SERVICES USING SOME ASPECTS OF GRAM++ FOR VISUALISATION

Aruna Sharma# and R. Limaye*
#MP Cooperative Dairy Federation, Bhopal, INDIA
* Trident Cellnet Technologies Ltd., Bhopal, INDIA


ABSTRACT

The increasing emphasis on development in Indian planning has given scope for multi-sectoral development and to shoulder this responsibility there has been plethora of schemes floated mainly by government departments. These schemes largely possess similar focus and approach of alleviating poverty by augmenting productivity, income, awareness, education etc. However, the non-synchronized impact of such efforts leads to little change in people’s conditions or conditions of their households. On the contrary, there are some development areas falling in the non-scheme or non-programme categories, which virtually attract high priority as these pertain to urgent needs of the people.

The Ninth Plan re-emphasizes the need for integrating various sectoral programmes for local integrated local area development strategies within the umbrella of PRIs. Through 73rd and 74th amendment in the constitution of India, Madhya Pradesh has been the first state to decentralize and the district level planning has been entrusted to district Planning Committee and Zilla Sarkar. Conscious efforts are made to distribute the resources through budget head division between the Zilla Sarkar and state Government. However, a step ahead is to ensure that this tied fund in the district is planned, implemented and spent in synchronized manner. The ‘convergence of services’ is the approach to automatically converge all these resources to identified thrust activity.

There is a general consensus among development planners that Information and Communication Technology (ICT) can be used to facilitate rational decision-making and increase access to information needed by decision makers. Increased access to ICTs at the grassroots level can also facilitate people’s participation in and control of development, and ensure transparency and responsiveness of government mechanisms. Although ICTs are not a panacea for poverty alleviation, they can have a positive role in development. It can be utilized as a proactive tool for effective qualitative development process. It can act as a tool to ensure systematic development resulting in growth and the poor become active participant in the process of growth and enhance their income and resources.

Government and its numerous agencies are the largest service providers. Unfortunately the manpower and money have not exhibited results upto the expectations. While the anti-poverty programmes have been strengthened in successive years and while, in percentage terms, poverty levels have reduced from 56% of India’s population in 1973-74 to 37% in 1993-94, the number of rural poor has more or less remained static.

In order to ensure the maximum effectiveness and efficiency of these multiple interventions, coordination and planning for their convergence is essential. With the emphasis on decentralization and empowerment of village-level development agencies, planning to synergise efforts with PRIs and CBOs has assumed greater significance.

LIMITATIONS OF THE PRESENT PROCESS

These asymmetrical variations in planning are because of hindrances present in the overall development programmes: -

* Plethora of schemes – there are a number of schemes, programmes under implementation for one or some or various services of rural development that at times, it become difficult to trace or count the services.
 

* Number of Agencies - Not only the government agencies/ departments are engaged in the programmes for development but also many non-government organisations/ voluntary agencies have a crucial role in implementing the various programmes. At times, more than one agency provides the same service or services in a particular area without any integration of them. Moreover, at times there is no common agenda for the two agencies working in the same area. There is a lack of coordination between the government departments for various schemes and programmes of services.
 

* Lack of access of information – ‘Knowledge is power’ is true when it comes to effective advanced planning. Information is the key to success of any plan and absence or lack of it (or lack of access to it) may have unwanted bearing on the planning process, resulting in serious lacunae.
 

* Personality based approach – The planning is many times based on the assumptions, exposures, knowledge and experience of an individual (an expert) or a group of individuals (experts). The programmes or services are oriented based on the views of community leaders, planners, government officials etc. only. Due to this approach, the success of a programme in an area gets duplicated at other areas also without assessing the needs and resources of the programme in those areas. The participation of the local people, other experts, community and others is minimal. The approach does not quantify the actual need of the local people of an area in the planning process.
 

* Lack of systematic tool – The planners do not tend to use the modern tools and techniques available in the planning procedure.

Some of the fall-outs of such a fragmented planning process are sub-optimal use of resources and dilution of development outcomes at the grassroots. Resources are also unevenly distributed, leading to the neglect of some areas and increase in disparities. At the district level, despite an average investment of 200 to 300 crores of rupees, and more than 2000 schemes in the central and state sectors, sub-optimal planning has restricted the outcomes and impacts of development schemes.

A coordinated planning process is therefore essential for coordinated and accelerated development, and to facilitate convergence of schemes and programmes. A more consultative and participatory approach to planning can also facilitate the wider involvement of people and ensure that local needs are adequately addressed. The state commitment to decentralized development must be reflected at every stage of planning, and demands the empowerment of communities to intervene effectively in planning process.

The key issues to be addressed to make planning more effective are:

* Non-consultative planning process
* Non-convergence of services and multiplicity of schemes
* Planning based on schemes than needs
* Supply based planning instead of demand

USE OF CUSTOMIZED GRAM++ FOR VISUALIZATION OF THE PLANNING PROCESS: DRISHTI

Drishti is to “To see the Resources, the achievement and is a Drishti: vision for activities in a region on a digitized map”. This project Drishti aims to create a generic system, which can be used by all departments belonging to the state administration for tracking different development resources village-wise. The proposed software shall be installed and also made available on CD-ROM media for every department of the district administration. The tool will have features to dynamically configure parameters for tracking and entering data month-wise. The entered data will be displayed in digitized 'majbuli' maps.

Spatial Database for the 300 blocks (approx.) will be generated. It is proposed to involve CSRE IIT BOMBAY, and TRIDENT in developing the tools and the software to support the maps.

Drishti is a tool, which integrates a database and a map. The user would be provided a map with village boundaries, he would enter in table the parameters he desires to view on the map using icons from icon library or self-created icons. Thus the concept is to give an IT tool where desired data can be seen by the user the way we do on a blank paper map by drawing what we need to show. The tool would be provided to the user with a digitized map library of that district and would be available on a CD.

Features of the tool would be

* Map Library of desired location with village boundaries
 

* Provision for user to give a title user desires, and make Thematic Maps as per user’s requirement.
 

* Create Tables and add, edit desired Data in the table with location, parameter, icon selected (from icon library or using an appropriate image)
 

* Add, modify and edit data.
 

* View and maintain archives.
 

* User can then select what parameters he desires to show on the map.
 

* The tool should be able to support maps from different digitisations tool.
 

* Copy Thematic maps on digital media
 

* Printing of Thematic Maps
 

* Multilingual (English and Hindi)
 

* Compounding of villages to form a cluster would be possible
 

* User Manual
 

* Digitisation of Block Maps
 

* Adequate Training inputs for usage and adequate product support services
 

* Feature to zoom and print maps with multiple layers

Benefits of Drishti:

* Desktop Utility would be a handy tool and helps departments to make their own tables for maintaining data and also create thematic maps to display activities map.

* The tool would be compatible to most flavors of Microsoft Windows operating system, thereby making it easy for usage in existing computers without much added cost.

* The tool allows planners to show projections even to lesser-educated people and increase awareness on plans, implementation of targeted activities.

* The Project is planned in such a manner that ROI (Return on Investment) is ensured.

* The Dichotic utility would thus enable MAPPING FROM EXISTING DATABASES AND

 

ALSO AS INDEPENDENT MAPPING TOOL.

ROLE OF GRAM ++ IN RURAL SPATIAL DATABASE GENERATION FOR VILLAGE LEVEL DEVELOPMENT AND PLANNING – A CASE STUDY FOR MANASA BLOCK, NEEMUCH DISTRICT, MADHYA PRADESH

Murthy M.V.R.L., Soni R, Goel P*. and Patidar R.D.*
Technology Development & Application Center
Regional Research Laboratory, Bhopal
* Technology Resource Center, Manasa


ABSTRACT

For a developing country like India the need to design developmental programmes by targeting and identifying the different developmental parameters at village level is essential to evolve effective and result oriented planning. The non-spatial data of household in conjunction with the cadastral level spatial data can bring about the typical characteristics of the area spatially, which can help policy makers to focus on their targets. Keeping this in mind an attempt has been made to work out developmental status at village level, spatially using an indigenously developed GIS package GRAM ++.

Background

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), New Delhi is operating a Country Cooperation Framework (CCF-I) to extend support to India in terms of creating enabling environment for Sustainable Human Development (SHD) concerns. Under this CCF-I one major programme “Technology Management Programme Support” (TMPS) was launched to introduce S&T interventions towards SHD. This programme is in operation since 1999 and would go though the year 2002. This programme is executed by Department of Science and Technology, GOI and has various sub-programmes, which are in operation. One such sub-programme is “Establishment of TDC-TRC Networks” and has geographical spread in three States of India namely Madhya Pradesh, Chattisgargh and Jharkhand. The Regional Research Laboratory (RRL) of Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has taken the implementation responsibility of for the States of Madhya Pradesh and Chattisgargh under which ten block level Technology Resource Centers (TRC) are established. Each TRC is manned a by a competent Community Based Organization (CBO) and each CBO takes care of a block consisting of about 150 to 300 villages.

This sub-programme has three major objectives namely, creation of employment opportunities, equal opportunities for women and better quality of life in rural communities. These objectives are envisaged to be achieved through the identification and adaptation of appropriate science and technological interventions based on local skills and resources. In order to understand the needs of rural communities and their resources detailed house-to-house surveys were conducted by trained enumerators on different aspects of rural life, in other words, the human development indices. The household data is divided into eleven different parameters and created as an Oracle database. At the same time cadastral level surveys were also conducted through the local villagers to map out their resources in all the villages of the block. Thus, mapped resource map of each village is converted to a spatial database using GRAM ++ and the some developmental parameters are derived from the household surveyed data (Oracle tables).

Based on the developed spatial database and other surveyed data, various developmental plans for the block are being generated and appropriate scientific and technological interventions are being implemented to arrive at the sub-programme objectives. Thus, the GRAM ++ software has become an instrument in understanding the developmental scenario and micro level-planning tool for rural communities. In the present paper an attempt is made to provide an insight into the development of indices for a selected block Manasa, Neemuch District, Madhya Pradesh.

Study area

Manasa Block of Neemuch district, M.P. shares its south western border with the State of Rajasthan. The block occupies the latitudes from 240 19’ to 240 43’ and longitudes from 750 00’ to 750 36’ 30”. It comprises a plateau region and raises about 580 m above mean sea level, sloping towards north and south. In the north it is sloping towards the valley of the Gungali river (in Rajasthan state), into which numerous streams flow from south. In the south, the plateau is sloping towards Retau River, which forms the southern boarder of the Madhya Pradesh State. Both the rivers flow towards western side and join the Chambal River. In the center of the plateau a few kilometres above the Rampura – Manasa road runs a hill about 80 m high in east-west direction, terminating at the north of Rampura town. North of this forms plateau of about 580 m high and the hill becomes the southern scarp of this plateau. Villages Amad, Bhadana, Chandrapura, Banjari and Matasara, etc. are lying on this plateau.

The remaining part of Manasa Block consists of undulated plan. The general slope of the block is towards west i.e. towards Chambal valley. The eastern and southeastern parts of the block are occupied by the submergence area of Gandhi Sagar dam. Manasa block covers about 1,400 sq. kms of geographical area with 263 villages and divided into 74 Panchayats. The block is sub-divided into five zones for operational convenience based on topography, ethnic groups, and related parameters. A unique code for each village is generated based on block ID (1 Character) zone ID (2 characters), Panchayat ID (2 characters) and village ID (2 characters), thus forming a string of 7 characters. For example the code for Choukadi village would be M010101, indicating Manasa block (M), Zone 1 (01), Panchayat 1 (01) and village 1 (01). All the maps and files, and tables related to this village are named with this code for easy understanding. The same village code is used for generating the household data. This block has a population of about 1,60,000 persons and 32,600 house holds.


Methodology

The surveys for non-spatial data at household level are conducted and stored as Oracle tables. In the same manner the village level cadastral maps are generated on tracing film and transferred to computer by scanning. This generated data is used for further processing using GRAM ++ software.

The methodology at the GRAM ++ end could be categorized into three parts, (a) all the village level maps are stored as vector files with non-spatial databases linked. (b)Using the spatial and non-spatial databases, the indices for socio-economic index, agro-ecological index and human capital index are computed.

The indicators used under each category are:

Socio Economic Index

* Type of Household Index
* Electrified Household Index
* Kerosene lighted Household
* Wood fueled Household
* Kerosene fueled Household
* Household Income Index
* Live Stock
* Road Index
* Live Stock Index
* Tractors

Human Capital Index

* Pressure on working class
* Rural Female literacy rate
* Sex ratio

Agro Ecological Index

* Percentage of cropped area
* Well index
* Total agriculture income

Finally, a composite index was constructed using Principal Component Analysis technique, by assigning weightage to various indicators that are highly correlated among themselves to obtain socio-economic index, human capital index, and agro-ecological Index.

In the beginning a correlation matrix is calculated and its eigenvectors and corresponding eigenvalues are computed. The eigenvector associated with the largest eigenvalue is used as weights for indicators as given below (it explains the maximum of variations in the index).

% of explained variation = (largest eigenvalue / number of indicators)*100.

The weights of each of the indicators are calculated and multiplied with the indicators and added up to get the composite index. Using the composite index the block is divided into different groups based on the index and then mapping exercise is carried out. The interpretation of the maps of socio-economic index shows that it is “High” and “Very High” in the southern and western parts and northern part is “Medium” and the central part is “Low”. This analysis indicates the geographical variation of the block in terms of socio-economic status. The agro-ecological index shows a mixed trend indicating northeast as “Low”, while human capital index shows “High” on the western side as well as in the south central side.

Conclusions

The above exercise of deriving the socially relevant parameters through microlevel surveys and village level mapping could give us crucial indices for generating the developmental scenarios. By visual interpretation of the GRAM ++ generated maps it could be seen that relatively higher level of development exists in the southwestern part of the block. Leaving the portions of middle east of the block other areas form agro-ecologically favourable zones. High level of socio-economic development is concentrated on the western and the southern part of the block, while the human capital index map depicts that the villages on the northwestern part and south central part rank highest among others. With a simple aggregation the block shows the low level of development on the northeastern part and high on the southwestern part. The rest of the block gives a mixed picture owing to interdependency of various parameters.

From this exercise, it could be concluded that based on systematic surveys and detailed analysis, the GRAM ++ package could be effectively utilized for generating valuable parameters and indices for understanding the developmental status of rural communities and their spatial variations to assist in micro level planning and prioritisation of scarce natural and financial resources. Thus this helps in the efforts towards reaching the goals of sustainable human development.


Acknowledgements

The present work is carried out as a part of the UNDP-DST-GOI sub-programme (IND/97/140) and the authors are thankful to UNDP for financial support and to the DST for the institutional support. The first two authors are also thankful to the Director, RRL, Bhopal for permitting to publish this paper. We also gratefully extend our sincere thanks for numerous enumerators, their supervisors, co-team members and our rural communities for data collection, mapping, tabulation, cross validation, suggestions and the officers and staff of Government of Madhya Pradesh for providing the basic village level maps. Above all UNDP and DST need to be thanked again for supporting the development of GRAM ++ and sincere thanks to all the GRAM ++ team members of CSRE, IIT Bombay for providing GRAM ++, guidance, support and continuous upgradation.