Household Survey plagued by many flaws

HYDERABAD: The much anticipated intensive household survey (IHS) held on Tuesday by the first government of the newly formed Telangana state got itself exposed to various flaws.

In general, any one person could represent his whole family when the enumerator visited them. Against earlier mentioned of requirement of submitting photo copies of original documents, most enumerators did not bother to check even the original documents as they seem to be in a hurry to cover a large number of households entrusted on them.

At a few places, the biggest data collection exercise was nothing short of an enumerator seating himself at a comfortable house and asking representatives of each house to visit him. But mostly, people spent time ready with forms and required documents, waiting for the enumerators to visit them.

Meanwhile, a locality in Sultan Bazaar faced complete neglect as no enumerator visited them over the last three days for data collection. Such scenes were particularly evident at the Old City where like the rest of the city, a bandh like situation prevailed.

At Vittal Maruthi lane in Sultan Bazaar, which has 100 odd houses, a resident D Sangameshwar complained, 'People came for data collection in nearby lanes but not ours. We have all the documents ready and even to lodge a formal complaint, we are not able to do so as authorities are not reachable,' he said.

Meanwhile, enumerators who found the public largely cooperative, said they had tough time finding houses based on addresses. Even when they located the house, they were welcomed by a number of families to whom portions of the house has been rented out. At many places, addresses in the documents did not match with the place of residence.

'We are going with the survey based on a 2011 census list. The names of residents and owners do not tally. We are trying to locate house numbers and then adding names and details of the tenants too into the list,' said Sunita, an enumerator who was seen collecting information from a house rented out to nine families, at Enginebowli.

Entrusted with 84 families, she said each household was taking more than 20 minutes. Answering citizens to whose houses enumerators have not reached, she said, 'Whoever has stuck a sticker on the door would arrive, and if not, call the contact number.'

A daily wager from nearby Syed Ali Chabutra, Qazi Mohammad Shahnawaz-ud-din remarked, 'We are all poor people who do not even own a house. We are giving what we are asked to. We do not even know what benefits are we going to get because we have never received any. My ration card stands cancelled for three years and no one has a clue why?'

Manish Kumar Srivastav at the nearby Lal Pasha Masjid added that the survey was a 'huge flop' in the Old City. 'Enumerators are asking for details and people are telling them, but not everything. Every household here has more than one gas connection and the form has space only for listing one connection,' he said.

Further, 'If the concept behind the survey is weeding out bogus ration cards, why do they not ask if we have one. Most of us do not have it,' he added.