Secretary, Ministry of Rural Development, Shri Shailesh Kumar Singh, launched DAY-NRLM’s “SARATHI” app at Krishi Bhawan today, which is to be used as the national tech solution for the strategy for working with most vulnerable. He explained how this is a step in the right direction considering saturation and inclusion as key priorities for the Ministry of Rural Development. The SARATHI app has been developed in partnership with The/Nudge Institute and will be immediately deployed in six states where DAY-NRLM’s Innovation funding is driving special projects for 24,000 most vulnerable households.

The Joint Secretary, Rural Livelihoods, MoRD, Smriti Sharan, in her opening comments, stressed on how technology can play a multi-faceted role in ensuring timely, effective, and efficient implementation of the Graduation program targeting the most vulnerable. Each component of the program beginning from the consumption grant to livelihood grant, livelihood coaching among others requires strong monitoring to ensure delivery of benefits to the end beneficiaries. When working with programs of scale, it also becomes imperative to incorporate automated tools and technologies to reduce the risk of human errors, act fast, in a timely manner and reduce the burden of regular administrative load on the concerned teams.

Senior Director, Center for Rural Development, The/Nudge Institute, John Paul followed this up with a detailed presentation on the SARATHI tech solution’s development journey so far. He highlighted how the solution works to ease the work on multiple levels of reducing cognitive load for the cadre that works with the most vulnerable households, administrative load for SRLM staff and ensures transparency at all levels. Real-time usage of the app mitigates the risk of leakage of consumption and livelihood support being provided to the target households. Further, it allows for consistent monitoring and tracking of livelihood planning as well as progress, making it possible for course correction and learning from the process.

Voices from the community and states added to this narrative with their stories of first-hand usage of the SARATHI app. Sarada Sarkar, a community resource person from Tripura, who has been engaged in the selection of the most vulnerable households in Ambassa block and conducted PAT (Poverty Assessment Tool) surveys herself using the app shared how it has increased the effectiveness of her work. The Chief Operating Officer of Tripura SRLM, Dr. Dipayan Ghosh, shared his appreciation of the high-levelof accuracy that SARATHI was able to achieve in the targeting of the most vulnerable households and the quality of analytics that the dashboard was able to display to stakeholders at multiple levels.

The Secretary, in his concluding remarks, expressed his confidence in the SARATHI tech solution after hearing these testimonies. He also appreciated that SARATHI has been well-embedded in the LokOS system.

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