Telangana Household Survey Served No Purpose

Any public surveys taken up by the state or central government starts of with a clear mandate and recommendations from either a regulatory or reformatory commission, a planning body, a statistical department or other forms of constitutional bodies. Generally these surveys will have predefined objectives which are extremely clear, transparent and are non controversial and certainly not forceful. Also these surveys usually are voluntary in nature and will not be binding on the participants.

Almost all the surveys are driven by very well constituted survey committees populated by expert samplers, statisticians, sociologists, data analysts and other professionals who are mandated by the government to establish the survey objectives, target population, sampling methods, data collection approach, collations, processing & of course eventually data analysis & knowledge management for reaching the predefined objectives. It generally takes for just planning & drawing out an execution plan anywhere from a quarter year to half a year & the data collection process would take good few months, if an authentic, scientific & effective survey were to be conducted for state of Telangana size. However, it looks like the State Government of Telangana wanted to establish a world record in its speed of conducting a public survey, leaving everything else astray.

It seems juvenile and downright hilarious that a newly elected State Government which takes resumes office on the 3rd of June 2014 actually executes the highly publicised Comprehensive Household Survey [CHS] in one single day on the 19th of August 2014 and calls it the most successful survey in the country. It’s no wonder that the fraternity of statisticians, analysts & professional surveyors across the country along with all the other state governments in India were possibly in shock & awe at the lightening speed with which the entire exercise was carried out under 77 days of assuming office and add to it headed by a newly elected chief minister & by a newly formed state of Indian Union.

Now to describe this survey as 100% successful, most popular, productive, effective and best in world by the incumbent chief minister, his state government and the pied pipers of the ruling party is the icing on the cake.

On a more serious note, what is startling and quite unsettling are the words being used by self styled intellectuals in the columns& articles defining this survey as ‘scientific’, ‘accurate’, ‘socially impacting’. The authors eulogizing the survey must essentially get the definitions right for the above words, as none can be attributed to the CHS by the State Government of Telangana.

The real story which most of the political, social analysts & educated professionals can understand is quite different from what’s being written about the CHS by few authors praising it. The idea of this survey seemingly started with alienation of migrants in Hyderabad as the prime objective, however, as a survey with this kind of core objectives can never be constitutionally, legally, socially acceptable, the entire state was made to be the target population on a second thought. This was clearly evident from multiple versions of the questionnaires which made rounds, with highly objectionable and intriguing questions on the where abouts of the citizens of Hyderabad & their ancestral history.

However after the apex court chiding the government against the ‘compulsory participation’ media campaign by the honourable chief minister & his government to the citizens through various public media, and almost a dire threat to the citizens to complete this survey compulsorily in one single day by staying at home or consider not being the citizens of Telangana, the government yielded and had to sacrifice its prime objective and made a public statement that the survey is voluntary & not compulsory. It’s quietly evident that the central purpose was lost right after.

This is how the reactive, unprepared, knee jerk and totally misplaced Comprehensive Household Survey [CHS] has lost its core objectives of hyderabad centricity, compulsive participation, legally accurate data [There was a threat to sue for inaccuracy in one of the versions of the questionnaire at the undertaking & signature stage] from the population and got eventually relegated to a panicky rural population data collection , who out of sheer fear of losing their eligibility to state welfare schemes arrived into their villages in hoards by spending their hard earned money and losing their livelihood & work for two to three days.

Once again, it served no purpose as the answers even the rural folks have given to the exhaustive questionnaire of CHS can never be even verified as accurate. While in Hyderabad, it is anybody’s guess that after the decapitated questionnaire which does not have intriguing questions as earlier designed, the data collected served no actual purpose, the real purpose for which the entire survey game has been initiated, simply failed.

It’s about 35 days since the CHS survey has been completed, neither there is a single word from the state government on the survey outcomes, nor there any publication which has carried the analysed outcomes from this survey.

This futile exercise was funded by the public exchequer, not to mention the crores of rupees gullible poor & rural folks would have spent from their pocket, to participate in this purposeless political ploy. In retrospect, the entire exercise had seemingly very few positive outcomes, one that the enumerators made some money & the second being, kids and employees rested at home on a working day with a state declared holiday.

Note: The author is Official Spokesman & State Media Convener, BJP