Phygital delivery helped cut digital divide during pandemic: Samagra CEO

Samagra, a mission-driven governance consulting firm, believes that governance can be the primary lever of change in creating large-scale impact through the use of technology. The bootstrapped firm works with state governments to bring social impact, using technology as a tool. Gaurav Goel, founder and chief executive officer, spoke with Thirumoy Banerjee on the firm’s projects, digitisation in India, and the road ahead. Edited excerpts:

You have worked with several state governments. Which are some of your most effective projects so far?

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Haryana is ranked number 1 in citizen-centric good governance. We contributed to this transformation by supporting the design and implementation of Antyodaya Saral -- overhaul of the delivery of 600+ government-to-citizen schemes and services across over 40 departments. The idea behind Saral was to revamp public service delivery so that minimal or no government-citizen interface is required to ensure timely delivery of critical schemes and services.

Under Mission Prerna in Uttar Pradesh, we are working with the state to impart foundational literacy and numeracy (FLN) skills to 12 million primary government school students. UP was the first state to launch an FLN-focused mission, and eventually this became the cornerstone of the NIPUN Bharat mission launched at the national-level.

We have designed a decision support system for the Odisha government, which integrates agricultural data from multiple databases (like weather, irrigation, pesticide, fertilisers, soil, seeds, schemes, and insurance) into a single portal. Another programme is Kalia, Odisha’s flagship direct income transfer scheme. Today, the policy response to farmer distress has shifted from farm loan waivers to direct income support. Kalia was also the precursor to the Centre’s PM-KISAN.

Can you tell us more about the technology and solutions you have deployed?

To standardise assessments for all students across 75 districts in UP on the same competencies through the same tool, SamagraX and Google, with support from Central Square Foundation, developed the Prerna Lakshya app. It can be used by parents and teachers to help students practise grade-appropriate competencies and identify areas that require more focus. It can measure oral reading fluency with 96 per cent accuracy.

In Himachal Pradesh, we have developed an open-source app to connect teachers of government schools with parents. This app, called eSamwad, allows teachers to send personalised SMSs to parents about student attendance, homework, and assessment. It is also being used to capture assessment data, which can provide granular insights on how a student is performing across subjects and where she requires more support.

The nature of agriculture is such that it is affected by disparate but interrelated factors such as weather, soil, seed, fertilisers, pests, irrigation and insurance, to name a few. To mitigate this challenge, we worked with the Odisha government to design and implement the decision support system, which integrates critical agricultural data from over 20 databases into a single online portal for use by government officials.

In education, the challenge was to get children to digital platforms. How did you address this?

The digital divide is real. In the states where we work, we have developed a phygital (physical + digital) model of delivery, wherein online classes and content dissemination is supplemented with teachers going to communities to distribute printed reading material, worksheets, and clear students’ doubts. In Haryana, we designed Shiksha Mitra, wherein students’ relatives, friends or neighbours could share their devices for a few hours every day, so that they can receive academic content and stay in touch with teachers. In Himachal, we launched a device donation drive from across the country and gave them to students.

How far have we progressed in our Digital India roadmap?

Historically, we have been behind on digitisation, but I think we have leapfrogged in the past decade. I think on e-governance in general, and GovTech broadly, India is much ahead of even some developed countries. When Covid struck, we were in a position to do direct benefit transfers through the click of a button. Compare this to, say, the US, where cheques were issued to provide financial assistance.

Aadhaar, eKYC, direct benefit transfers, UPI, CoWin are all innovations, which operate at a scale that’s unthinkable for most countries. We are making strides towards the next frontier through National Digital Education Architecture, National Digital Health Mission and Open Network for Digital Commerce. These are population-scale solutions we have built.

Samagra wants to focus on “open-source” and “micro tech” and “WhatsApp-based governance solutions”. Could you explain their functioning?

We create technology products for governments that are “open-source”, which means they can be reused across other departments and states without anyone having to pay for it, or subscribe. Not all governance problems require large tech systems or complex tech solutions. Sometimes, a problem like streamlining communication between a state department and field officials only requires a WhatsApp group with officials concerned. We refer to such low-tech, high-impact solutions as micro tech. We have built the unified communications interface that aims to democratise use of communication channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS, and email for governance use through a standard configurable manner that is reusable and scalable across states.

How does Samagra fund its work with the government?

Apart from Unicef and the CBSE, we work with the governments of Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Odisha. We have also worked with the Central government, governments of NCT Delhi and Andhra Pradesh, and NITI Aayog. At any point we work on eight or nine programmes in five to six domains across four or five states, as well as the Central government. Our funding partners include the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Omidyar Network India, Central Square Foundation, Ashoka University and EkStep.

What are the major projects in the pipeline?

We are working on an EdTech project called Shiksha, envisioned as a nationally recognised repository of open-source education products. We will start working with the Odisha government on transforming public health service delivery. This will be a foray into another critical development domain for us.