Amartya Sen trust’s survey praises Mamata govt schemes Didi Ke Bolo and Duare Sarkar

Report by Pratichi (India) Trust, published this month, says participation of women in airing grievances is almost 45%, an indication of their interest in claiming rights and entitlements.

File photos of Mamata Banerjee and Amartya Sen | ANI & Commons

Kolkata: Nobel laureate Amartya Sen’s Pratichi (India) Trust, an organisation set up to promote education and alleviate poverty (with a focus on eastern Indian states), has praised the Mamata Banerjee government’s initiative in addressing grievances received by the government.

In a survey report, Governance as ‘Action-oriented’, the Trust stated that grievance redressal initiatives — Didi Ke Bolo (Tell Didi) and the Duare Sarkar (Government At Doorstep) programme, under which the government sets up camps in localities to address people’s grievances — had helped address at least 95 per cent of all reported grievances. The Print has accessed a copy of the report.

The two schemes were set up in 2019 (Did Ke Bolo) and 2020 (Duare Sarkar).

The report, published earlier this month, claimed, “The Public Grievance Redressal Cell (PGRC), set up in 2019 under chief minister Mamata Banerjee, a technology-based (ICT enabled) platform for public grievance redressal, appears to have dealt with more than ten lakh grievances through online and around 2.75 crore people through camp mode (Duare Sarkar) with an impressive record of 95 per cent grievance resolution rate.”

It added: “Since this is a community-based service, rather than an institution-based one, a huge number of people are reached through this system. People who could not come to the institutionalised infrastructure to avail entitlements now can access the infrastructure better.”

Both the Didi Ke Bolo and Duare Sarkar initiatives are especially targeted at rural communities that have limited access to government offices and agencies.

Women ‘benefited’

Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee often refers to women voters as her main pillar of support. And the survey report by Amartya Sen’s trust appears to corroborate this. According to the survey, the participation of women in airing their grievances is almost 45 per cent, despite the fact that most of the households are headed by men.

“The figure indicates women’s interest in claiming their rights and entitlements. A close analysis of the categories of grievances also reveals a large proportion of women respond and react to a plethora of schemes specially designed for women including programmes such as ‘Kanyashree, ‘Rupashree’, and educational scholarships for specific social groups and widow pension schemes etc,” stated the report.

“We have also observed that a sizeable percentage of women have registered their grievances during the Covid-induced humanitarian crisis and the devastation caused by the natural disaster like Amaphan,” it added.

According to the report, Paschim Medinipur is the district where the maximum number of people have accessed the two programmes (with 17 per cent of grievances received from here), followed by Purba Medinipur (with 11 per cent of complaints).

Referring to the report, during a press conference Thursday at Nabanna, the state secretariat, Banerjee said she was happy to know that the government initiatives were being acknowledged.

(Edited by Poulomi Banerjee)