BENGALURU: A state-wide, a pet project of CM Siddaramaiah to compute accurate data on socio-economic conditions and level of education among people belonging to all castes, seems to proving “wasteful” expenditure because the authorities have not be able to collate information about all families.
The state government, at the time of launch of this census on April 11 2015, had claimed that the data would help in implementation of programmes for uplift of all backward families irrespective of their caste or community. In all, Rs 175 crores was spent on this massive census operation involving over 1.27 lakh enumerators spread across the state to cull out information from each household. As many as 55 questions were drawn up by Karnataka State Backward Classes Commission in order to garner all details. Sources in the commission admitted that the survey was not satisfactory following complaints of non-visit to a number of houses in several districts. Though the local administration had showed over 90 per cent coverage of households in their respective districts in reality, it was different. Scores of enumerators reportedly skipped several houses in areas allotted to them due to cumbersome procedure in filling up the forms provided by the commission.
Sources said there was no point in blaming the enumerators because the timing of census was wrong. The harsh weather condition, vacations and non-cooperation by people too have contributed for the failure to cover all households. The enumerators had a harrowing time in Bengaluru as they were denied entry into gated community and posh housing complexes. The census staff were treated badly and residents refused to provide details. “According to our information, the census is incomplete in Bengaluru city as thousands of families have not furnished details at all. The commission did not agree to the government's idea of taking details of those families skipped during the exercise from the census carried out in 2010-11. Even the proposal to call all those people over the phone to seek details was not liked by the commission. So, both the ideas were dropped.
Social welfare minister H. Anjaneya admitted the delay in drawing up the survey report owing to series of elections since December 2015.
