Chennai: The State and Union Governments have launched a large number of welfare schemes, but lack of awareness and publicity limits them from reaching the underprivileged section.
To eradicate this gap, smart phone application Haqdarshak would enable any citizen to know about their eligibility to various government and private sector schemes through onetime screening process of identification documents.
Currently in execution in Tiruvallur and Nagapattinam districts along with district administration officials, the mobile application is a part of ‘Building resilience of children and their communities by integrating disaster risk reduction, child sensitive social protection and technology’ project by Nokia. The project is to be implemented in 60 villages in Tamil Nadu across all districts with support from ‘Save the Children’.
“The application will digitize all the 166 welfare schemes into a database of welfare schemes in Tamil Nadu as well as the applicable eligibility rules. Users can find out if they are eligible for ‘n’ number of schemes”, says Vinay Iyer, project director of Haqdarshak in Tamil Nadu. “Details of 129 government schemes, including 80 state government schemes, 49 central government schemes and 37 non-governmental welfare schemes will be provided as per the eligibility criteria by screening documents of the individual and the benefits of each scheme will be listed,” he added. Schemes of various departments including social welfare and nutritious meal programme department, higher education department, school education department, health department, Adi Dravidar and tribal welfare department, ministry of communication and technology, ministry of defence, agriculture, fisheries and integrated child protection schme will be available for verifying eligibility. “The app has a checklist for documents needed to apply for a particular scheme and a help line service for the customer seeking any kind of support. Candidates can apply using by filling in the forms and a receipt will be granted, which can be used later to track the status of it for various schemes,” said Thomas Chandy, CEO, Save the Children India. “We aim to empower the vulnerable by providing easy access and information of all the schemes,” he added.
