BENGALURU: The much-publicised socioeconomic, educational, and political representation survey got off to a sluggish start on Monday, with 1.7 lakh enumerators covering barely 400 houses and 1,100 people in Karnataka by noon. Officials said the pace is expected to pick up in the coming days, with field timings fixed between 9am and 5pm.K A Dayanand, member-secretary of Karnataka State Commission for Backward Classes (KSCBC), attributed the slow beginning to teething troubles. “Today being Day 1, we expected a slow start, as enumerators had to download these applications and start using them. We will see more traction in the next couple of days,” he told TOI.Complaints poured in from across the state about delays and glitches in the mobile application used for the exercise. Delays in receiving OTPs for Aadhaar authentication left many respondents impatient.”With enumerators having a larger area to cover, 150 houses per block and asking responses for 60 questions per household, a delay of 2-5 minutes in verifying credentials of respondents has become time-consuming,” one enumerator said. In several cases, final submissions were not accepted by the software, while poor network connectivity in rural areas compounded the problem.In Bengaluru Urban and Dakshina Kannada districts, fieldwork did not start even by Monday. While officials cited incomplete training as a reason for delays in Bengaluru, confusion reigned in Dakshina Kannada, where enumerators doubling as booth-level officers were also burdened with Election Commission’s forthcoming special intensive revision of voter lists.Teachers pressed into the survey raised concerns about downloading the app and securing uninterrupted mobile network. Chandrashekar Nugli, president of Primary School Teachers’ Association, said, “We expect these things to stabilize, with our teachers picking up pace from tomorrow.”Enumerators spoke of the hurdles they faced on Day 1. “We collected the kit at Ron tahsildar’s office. We could only download the app – KSBC Social and Educational Survey – by noon. We were told to do a census of 4-5 houses, but could not do it due to technical difficulties. Some of our colleagues, though, started it, but many of us couldn’t,” Vijayalaxmi, a teacher in Gadag district, said.Kamala, a teacher in Haveri district, said: “…I started the survey, but the first family failed to provide adequate information, so I couldn’t upload the details. I successfully uploaded details from the second house after 3 hours.”
