Category: Awards

YourStory recognised Dr. Santhosh Babu as a Disruptor of Tamil Nadu 2018 in the governance category for his stellar initiatives and transformational changes in governance, his spirited attitude as a career bureaucrat, and for creating positive change in administrative functions. Dr. Santhosh Babu’s wife Dr. Beena, Assistant Professor at Madras Medical College, received the award on behalf of her husband.
https://yourstory.com/video/dr-santhosh-babu-1QsgZsk5

TNHDC was awarded the National e-Governance Award 2016-17 ( Silver Award ) at the National e-Governance Conference at Vizag on 09.01.17 and 10.01.17. we undertook interventions in 1. Admin 2. Marketing and 3. Design & Production

IT interventions in Administration

1. E- Infrastructure: installed necessary IT infra like computers, networks, WiFi across 15 Showrooms, 7 productions centres across the country and the Corporate office.

2. E-Office Administration and Management Solution: comprising of (i) an integrated ERP implemented across all 7 production centers and 15 sales-cum-showrooms across the country, connecting all 128 employees from CMD to Peon; (ii) 100% paper-less file-management and decision support system; an “anytime, anywhere organisation”: decisions that used to take 25 -30 days now taken in a matter of minutes. (iii) centralized HR & payroll management system

3. E-Portal: Multi-purpose dedicated web-portal: www.tnhdcltd.com

4. E-Repository of Artisans and their skills: a comprehensive and dynamically updated web based repository of all artisans in the State of Tamil Nadu, with dedicated web-pages to each of the artisans and special features to promote marginalized groups of artisans. Funding to the tune of Rs.1.00 crore for this project was obtained from the State Innovation Fund. We expect about 1.5 lakh web pages to be created, making it one of the biggest Market places of artisans in the world. Each artisan gets one web page and data has been captured in a standardized format. The site is live now.

5. E-Review using iPads: iPads have been given to all Officers of the Corporation for supervision and e-Review through Face time. An audio review system has also been installed. Now our review costs about ₹2000/ review compared to about ₹1.00 lakh /review earlier.

6. E-Accounting: using Integrated tally-based double-entry accounting;

7. E-Attendance: through bio-metric staff attendance.

8. E-Monitoring: Centralized CCTV remote surveillance and monitoring at Corporate Office of all 12 showrooms and 7 production centers across the country at the Corporate Office using about 100+ IP cameras, leading zero pilferage in the last one year.

IT interventions in marketing

1. E-Commerce: direct online selling Poompuhar products through www.poompuhar.org, our smartphone poompuhar App and supported by free-home delivery through dedicated bikes/vans.

2. E-Commerce: online selling of Poompuhar products through e-Commerce giants like Snapdeal, Flipkart, Shopclues, Crafts villa and India Mart

3. E-Promotion: foray into a massive Social Media & Online Digital Marketing campaign using about 10 social media platforms including Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Quora, Pinterest, Google+, YouTube etc and engaging an exclusive agency for this promotion.

4. E-Inventory: bar-coding of all handicrafts products at all 15 showrooms.

5. E-Billing: Centralized computerized billing including use of credit card/debit card machines at all 15 showrooms

7. E-Promotion: jingles on the FM Radio at prime-time to enhance prospective customer base and brand recall.

8. E-mails: from CMD to about 3000 potential High Net worth Individuals

9. iPads: to all 21 marketing personnel to woo potential customers, make corporate presentations,and also for Face time review with Corporate Office

10. We are now working on creating Immersive Virtual Reality Poompuhar Showrooms.

IT interventions in Design & Production

1. E-Production: Government of Tamil Nadu has sanctioned Rs.1.68 crores from the State Innovation Fund for the creation of a Design Research and Development Centre (DRDC) for introducing non-traditional designs using 3D designing and 3D printing of designed plastic molds, which can be used for production of bronze icons. This also enables anywhere anytime custom production of handicrafts though 3D designing and printing of handicrafts molds. The #D designing software and 3D printer have been procured and currently training, designing and printing are on. We are taking a loan of ₹2.50 crores from NABARD for a complete makeover of TNHDC.

2. E-Designing: we have embellished the interiors of the International Terminals T3 & T4 of Chennai airport with 107 compositions worth ₹7.50crores. We are expecting shortly an order to the tune of ₹2.50 crores for the domestic terminal. We have also designed for Tirupathi, Trichy, Madurai and Coimbatore airports to the tune of ₹4.50crores. We are currently embellish the Secretariat, Ripon building and Ennore Port Trust to the tune of ₹2.00 crores.

3. E-Work Order Management: The e-Repository of Artisans and their skills will enable remote assignment of work order to various artisans (direct engagement of artisans), and geo-tagged bar-code based tracking of finished/ semi-finished products

4. production module is getting ready as part of our ERP

I have mentioned only the IT related interventions here. We have made huge interventions in training, production infrastructure etc also.

For more National e-Governance Silver Award

Skoch Smart Governance Platinum award was conferred for “Transformation of TNHDC using Information Technology” These are out of about 1450 entries this year from almost all states and UTs. 300 were shortlisted for presentations in August 2016 at 4 cities, and of that 100 were conferred with the Skoch Order of Merit on 08.09.16. Out of the 100, 45 institutions were conferred with the Skoch Smart Governance Awards on 09.09.16 in different categories, based on the jury (75%) and on the voting by the over 400 delegates (25%) who had put up their stalls.

Skoch Smart Governance Gold award was conferred for “Grievance Redressal through AMMA Call Centre ” These are out of about 1450 entries this year from almost all states and UTs. 300 were shortlisted for presentations in August 2016 at 4 cities, and of that 100 were conferred with the Skoch Order of Merit on 08.09.16. Out of the 100, 45 institutions were conferred with the Skoch Smart Governance Awards on 09.09.16 in different categories, based on the jury (75%) and on the voting by the over 400 delegates (25%) who had put up their stalls.

Was the recipient of the Dataquest E-Governance Champion Award, South India, for 2006

Was the recipient of the Best Collector Award of the Govt. of Tamil Nadu for Child Labour Eradication in Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu, in 2008,for using an innovative IT based “Out of School Children Tracking & Monitoring System” created within www.baack2school.in Eradication in Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu, in 2008,for using an innovative IT based “Out of School Children Tracking & Monitoring System” created within www.baack2school.in

Tracking out of School(www.baack2school.in)

This is an online portal developed especially for the Out Of School Children(O.O.S.C)., to monitor the children who were traced and brought back to school, their stay in the school till the age is 14. As we are all aware, India has the largest number of “out of School children” in the world. Despite special programmes like, DPEP, NCLP, INDUS and SSA, a large number of children still continue to be outside the realm of education. Persistence of child labour. visible and invisible, social barriers, parental attitudes, push factors in school etc are critical factors contributing towards this unenviable situation. The socio economic composition of drop out children suggests that educational deprivation occurs most among rural, urban poor and tribal children. The situation of girl children is far worse than that of boys. Usually out of school children get enrolled during intensive enrolment drives. Due to lack of proper tracking and monitoring system, the enrolled children drop out again after some time. It need not be overemphasized that no man, family or Nation can progress unless he/she tastes the potion called education.For these out of school children, childhood as a time to grow, learn, play, enjoy etc is meaningless.

It is under these circumstances that we have developed a web based software for tracking and monitoring all out of school children in the district. We strongly believe that it is possible to reach out to each and every family who require our help, provided the information is available to us. Usually, this may be available in the Village Education Register or through petitions, but these sources of information do not give us a global picture, and hence help given is only here and there. While Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) provides the necessary flexibility for the District Administration in bridging infrastructural gaps, convergence of schemes and funds of various Government Departments and Non Governmental Agencies help us to keep our promise to provide all necessary support to the families to keep the children going to school. Under this programme, all efforts are converged at a single web-based platform @www.baack2school.in It was a huge team effort in bringing back and retaining about 10,000 OOSC ( out of school children). But the process was simple..

When I joined the district, I found that the SSA, NCLP (National Child Labour Project), CFVP (Child Friendly Village Planning of UNICEF) were conducting their activities separately. Thus the first job was to integrate and complement the funds, functions and functionaries of these differently funded projects on to one platform…with the OOSC as the main focus and all activities focussed towards bringing back the OOSC back to school. I created a force of volunteers called VVF ( Village Volunteer Force) @ one VVF per village panchayat with about 20 youths above the age of 18 constituting d VVF ( one boy and one girl from each hamlet who otherwise populate Rajanikant manram and the like). Trained them on three aspects… Child labour and OOSC, sanitation and first aid.. UNICEF helped hugely with d training. Thus I had at my disposal a huge team of about 6 to 7 thousand volunteers who were highly motivated. Each VVF has a link volunteer. These volunteers identify, enroll and regularly monitor each and every child and post the details online. If we divide 10,000 OOSC (Out of School Children) by 337 panchayats, then the problem of OOSC becomes simple, on an average about 30 OOSC per panchayat, who can be identified, cajoled to come back to school etc by d VVF. the incentive offered were anything under the sun that a Collector can give ( under d rules ofcourse!)… A house, a loan, employment, crop loan, auto loan, pensions for widows, physically challenged…. Anything…, the only condition being that the child should return to school and continue to be monitored on a monthly basis by the VVF who would feed the data online into an OOSC children tracking software built inside d website www.baack2school.in The role played by elected representatives especially the Panchayat Presidents was stupendous.

The software allows the collector or SSA to monitor each and every child whose photo and details are initially captured by the VVF in a pre-determined format. In addition we created the Panchayat Level convergence Committee (PLCC) of all Govt functionaries at the village level who otherwise never meet! For eg if the Village Health Nurse were to meet the VAO periodically, then the question of missing birth certificates won’t arise. The PLCC used to be conducted simultaneously in all 337 Village Panchayats on the first Friday of every month for one hour, with a one page agenda from the Collector given through the observers. 337 observers were deputed by me for overseeing the meetings etc. minutes of the meetings ( 337 pages ) would reach the collector the same day… thus we could make it a people’s movement… There were numerous other initiatives around this which the website chronicles.

My work as District Collector, Krishnagiri, especially the www.baack2school.in initiative was quoted in detail by his excellency Dr.A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, Former President of India, during the occasion of the 7th National Civil Services on 21-04-2012