We have successfully used mobile phones to amplify and advertise the impact of the Indian government in addressing unmet needs of rural citizens. Our approach is to expand the scope of our prior technology service, using the CGNet Swara platform, which uses an interactive voice response (IVR) system to collect and disseminate reports of grievances as well as their resolution from rural citizens.
Summary of Impact Stories
To understand the impacts that were reported via CGNet Swara, researchers at Microsoft performed a content analysis of 202 impact cases.
The posts represent impact in many areas of life. For example, there are numerous cases where calls to CGNet Swara are credited with payment of overdue wages; resumption of mid-day meals in schools; provision of denied ration cards; repair of broken hand pumps; and other important issues. One report tells the story of an officer who took a bribe of Rs. 99,000 (USD 3,300) from 33 Baiga adivasis. Upon hearing the report on CGNet, the officer not only returned the bribe but recorded his own post to apologize.
All impact cases were also tagged by topic area. The most common tags were food (12% of posts), education (11%), money (10%), labor (9%), and sanitation (7%). Reports also focused on problems with NREGA wages (7%), mid-day meals in schools (5%), roads (5%), hand pumps (4%), rations (4%), land (3%) and forests (2%).
Geographically, impact posts originated from the states of Madhya Pradesh (MP), Chhattisgarh (CG), Odisha, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Bihar. MP had the highest number of reported impact stories (41%), followed by CG at 37%.
See More detailed Report – Top Ten
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