Innovation/ Initiatives at Krishnagiri District, Tamil Nadu

District Collector (2006-05-29 to 2008-09-08) - 2 years, 3 months, 10 days

  1. Created India’s first rural BPO FOSTeRA (Fostering Technologies in Rural Areas) to train and employ naxal-affected youth of 10 th std and above into skilled BPO workers and subsequently employ them.
  2. Created India’s first web based “Out of School Children” tracking and monitoring system www.baack2school.in The aim of the project was to ensure that all children of school going age in Krishnagiri district would be enrolled and will continue to be retained in schools through a convergence of programs of the School Education Department, Child Friendly Village Planning programme of UNICEF and the National Child Labour Project and assistance under various government programmes such that the child goes to school. More than 10,000 (Ten thousand) “Out of School Children” were reenrolled.
  3. Village Volunteer Force: Created a team of 10-20 youngsters over the age of 18 in each of the 337 village panchayats called VVF or Grama Thannarv Padai. They were the major reason why the baack2school programme was a resounding success.
  4. Panchayat Level Convergence Committee (PLCC): In order to converge all Government schemes available for the village Panchayat, in every Village Panchayat, a committee headed by the Panchayat President with the Panchayat Assistant, Makkal Nala Paniyalar, VAO, VHN, Anganwadi worker, Head Master, PLF member, VVF Link Volunteer, local NGO etc was formed. They would meet on the first Friday of every month at 11.00am. The Collector would send an agenda to the committee through 337 observers. At the end of the meeting, the Collector would receive 337 minutes, which would be acted upon. Needless to say, this has been a huge huge success.
  5. Established an Accident Trauma Resuscitation Centre under Public Private Partnership with M/s Sparsh Hospitals, Bangalore, by renovating a dilapidated leprosy hospital building at Hosur with a contribution of Rs.20.00 lakhs from the general public. Government issued orders making it a public private partnership.
  6. Developed and implemented India’s first web based software for public grievance redressal www.vasathi.in so as to ensure that every petition is followed up to its logical conclusion.
  7. Created a web based software to analyze the health statistics f public attending the Government’s “Varumun Kappom” medical camps www.varumunkappom.in The software was developed such that the data could be used for health policy preparation and for epidemiological studies.
  8. Create a web-based software for Uzhavar Santhai www.uzhavarsanthaihosur.in All the operations of the market were computerized. This was the first completely online Farmers Market in Tamil Nadu.
  9. Prepared a visionary document to transform Hosur into a buzzling industrial city “Vision Hosur 2015”. The document was sent to Government.
  10. Prepared a comprehensive e-District project proposal for Krishnagiri District. Based on this proposal the district was selected as one of the five pilot e-Districts in Tamil Nadu.
  11. I proposed formation of an ELCOT IT SEZ and a TIDCO and GMR Joint Venture SEZ at Hosur. THE ELCOT SEZ at Vishwanathapuram village is still under construction by ELCOT.
  12. Fund in perpetuity: When I was the District Collector of Krishnagiri, construction of district stadium was already in progress. While the SDAT contributed 50% funds, the rest had to be mobilized by the district administration. We not only did mobilize the funds that were barely needed to complete the infrastructure, but also did the following so as to give the stadium more facilities and a state of the art ambience through good maintenance: We created a “Krishnagiri Sports Development Society”; then created an Infrastructure Development Corpus Fund (called Fund in Perpetuity) of Rs.1.00 Crore from 100 people, at the rate of Rs.1.00 Lakhs from each person/patron. The concept was called “Fund in Perpetuity “to maintain the Krishnagiri District Stadium. This has allowed the Public to become Life members of the Krishnagiri Sports Development Society by paying INR 0.1 million by cheque, for which they were issued with a receipt which explicitly stated that this is a refundable contribution and could be withdrawn after a lock in period of 1 year, on the condition that that member would bring in a new member. While the corpus would not be used, only the interest portion would be used for paying sports coaches, landscapist and gardeners, on a monthly basis. Each member was given a handbook mentioning the details of the society, its byelaws and details of all other members. The stadium is probably the one of the most beautiful and best-maintained stadia in Tamil Nadu, thanks to the above innovation. A similar Rs.1.00 Crore corpus was raised from 100 patrons for the professional maintenance of Govt. District Hospital Krishnagiri.
  13. Sanitation: I started a massive movement for sanitation by exhorting people to construct individual household toilets. We received 73 Nirmal Gram Puraskars from the President of India, where previously we had won none.
  14. Designed and developed a website for the district www.krishnagiri.tn.nic.in
  15. Created a brand for Krishnagiri mangoes “KRISHMAA”. A society under that brand name was formed with mango farmers and processors as members