CHENNAI: After hue and cry over the issue, the Rural Development Department has decided to conduct the digital crop survey with the help of volunteers, under the supervision of village panchayat secretaries instead of Village Administrative Officers (VAOs) or students.
The State government has resorted to this mode of conducting the crop survey, moving away from using students for the arduous task following political backlash and data-collection shortcomings.
Following resistance from VAOs, the task was later entrusted to agriculture students and outsourced personnel. A survey conducted a few months ago reportedly highlighted several shortcomings in data collection and implementation. In response, the State government has now decided to involve local volunteers identified by village panchayat secretaries to improve accuracy and accountability.
The digital survey aims to assess crop production patterns. It is part of the Union government’s agri-stack project, which aims to integrate agricultural data and services digitally.
In Tamil Nadu, the survey is conducted using a mobile application developed by the Tamil Nadu e-Governance Agency. The application enables real-time, geo-referenced, field-level data collection and is intended to support subsidy disbursal, policy planning and effective monitoring of agricultural activities.
However, the crop survey, held over the last two years, is facing another challenge, as some sections are objecting to the shifting of the task from the Revenue Department to the Rural Development Department.
“The crop survey has faced repeated hurdles in Tamil Nadu. Associations of rural development staff opposing the decision of shifting it to the Rural Development Department,” a Revenue Department official said.
Despite opposition, the government has directed all village panchayat secretaries to immediately identify and deploy volunteers in their respective village panchayats to carry out the digital crop survey as per the prescribed schedule.