Large scale projects: Lessons learnt
Editor’s Note: Learning from large scale projects
We had the pleasure of hosting Brijesh Awasthi, CEO and Founder, Netclan Inc., in an earlier episode of Unleash With FTEM. The discussion touched upon his entrepreneurial journey, spanning over two decades, and focused on ‘Loneliness’, which he describes as a pandemic bigger than corona. Since we were intrigued by his experience of working with the Government, he has culled out some learning from the rollout of Aadhaar cards across the country. The lessons learnt are vital, and with a little bit of introspection, we all can identify shades of these lessons that can be very easily applied to various spheres of our life. These lessons can only be learnt through exposure to such diverse environments and large scale projects. However, the easier way to learn these lessons is vicariously, through the shared experiences of others. So, let’s read what Brijesh learnt from the nation-wide rollout of Aadhaar cards.
Related: Watch other episodes of Unleash With FTEM
Process Re-engineering for the Government
I have been an entrepreneur for around two decades, and worked extensively with the Government sector. This stint provided us several opportunities to undertake process re-engineering for the Government, while deploying several schemes. We learnt a lot from various experiences, such as issuing EPICs (Electors Photo Identification Card) and authentication of BPL ration cards (Below Poverty Line). I did mention how we found ‘ghosts’ and duplicates during our conversation on Loneliness on Unleash With FTEM.
Understanding the Real India
Working with the Government sector provided me with an opportunity to learn so much more about the diversity of our country, and the implications of the same, while deploying large scale nation-wide rollouts. Many of us live in metropolitan cities and think we know about the Real India, but these experiences made me face what the Real Bharat is. The landscape of society is much different from our imagination, and our daily experiences.
Let me explain with the help of this anecdote.
Aadhaar Rollout: The Epitome of Large Scale Projects
While enrolling residents for Aadhaar (the world’s largest biometric ID system), we had to collect the demographic and biometric information of each resident. Biometric information included compulsory capture of all ten fingerprints and Iris (Retina) scan. The devices used were a full four figure scanner which use to take prints in 4+4+2 format.
When the enrolments were planned based on the study and pilot conducted in controlled condition, it was estimated that approximately 5-10 minutes were required to enrol one resident and based on that it was ascertained that approx. 100-120 enrolments were possible in a ten hours shift by one qualified and Aadhaar certified operator.
This calculation became the basis of the planning of the enrolment camps in the urban and rural areas – manpower to be deployed, duration of the camps and the equipment to be deployed at each location. The schedule of such camps was pre-intimated by publicity to the residents of those areas, villages etc.
The Twist!
When we started enrolments in rural areas, the count per day at each camp was drastically lower than what had been planned. Operators were able to enrol not more than 20-30 residents per enrolment station as against 100 planned! We were under tremendous pressure to scale up the enrolments from administration, but the enrolment count per camp was not increasing. This was leading to chaos and law and order problems, as people were mobilized for enrolments by the district administration, but they were not getting enrolled on time, leading to long and rowdy queues.
The Realization
I personally tried to dive deep and ascertain the root cause of this unexplained delay, and went to a remote enrollment centre in Hoshangabad District in the state of Madhya Pradesh. What I saw was a total eyeopener and what we all overlooked sitting at our plush offices and planning one of the biggest biometric enrolment drives of the world!
The quality of fingerprints in the rural areas were so low when captured through bio-metric devices that they were being repeatedly rejected by the software application. They were not good enough to give the correct results during de-duplication and it was difficult to find uniqueness in the fingerprints. A particular threshold of the quality of the fingerprints were required by the Aadhaar application to register or enroll a resident.
The fingerprint and Iris capturing were taking more than an hour in the rural areas dues to the bad quality of input and the operators had to do multiple iterations for each enrollment, and even then had to “force capture” the bio-metrics as the last option, which was allowed in the application.
Understanding Rural India
The reason for the poor quality biometrics is that people, both male and female, in rural areas are mostly involved in farming where they have to do lot of manual labour. The fingerprints diminish to a very low level with a prolonged exposure to the hard labour. Many residents have cuts or mutilated fingers, making the task more difficult, and these were being captured as exceptions. Same was the case with eye scans. Even the women, specially aged ones, do not even have visible fingerprints due to the work they do in kitchen with chulhas and angeethis (traditional stove), and washing utensils and clothes.
Aadhaar enrolment agencies had to deploy extra manpower, equipment, biometric devices and external power sources to just cater to the rural areas. This extra effort in capturing the biometrics in rural areas have costed 3X money, resources and time than the Urban areas.
This aspect of the quality of biometrics was not even factored while planning, and that is what you learn when you go to the grass root level to work – the real dynamics of rural and urban India!
Unleash With FTEM: Watch the Video
The above are excerpts from the conversation between Brijesh Awasthi, Founder and CEO, Netclan, in conversation with Rajiv Maheshwari, Business and Start-up Advisor, and Co-Founder, From The Experts Mouth in this episode of ‘Unleash With FTEM’
Check out the playlist of Season1 of UnleashWithFTEM.
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About The Author
Birjesh Awasthi is a Computer Science Engineer by qualification and a serial entrepreneur. He has worked for almost two decades with the Government sector in the e-governance space, and has been part of the largest e-governance projects such as the roll-out and deployment of Aadhaar cards, Smart card based vehicle registrations, digitization of courts, computerization of electoral rolls and EPIC (Election Photo Identity Cards), automation of public distribution systems (PDS) in various parts of India.
Brijesh is the Founder and CEO of Netclan Inc., a hyperlocal networking app, which can be downloaded from the Google PlayStore for now and will be available on App Store shortly.
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