INNOVATION FOR GOVERNANCE

Empowering Citizens
with ‘DISHAANK’
“DISHAANK is a mobile app which helps the citizen to see
the survey number details of any spot by mere tapping a
screen,” says Munish Moudgil, Commissioner, Survey
Settlement & Land Records, Revenue Department,
Government of Karnataka, in an exclusive interview with
Souvik Goswami of Elets News Network (ENN).

Munish Moudgil It has Additional Director, Joint Director,

Commissioner
Deputy Directors, Assistant Directors,
Survey Settlement & Land Records
etc. to administratively man at the level
Revenue Department
of State, district, block/tehsils. It does the
Government of Karnataka
work of creation, maintenance and
update of maps and connected records of
land survey. In Karnataka, every land
“The information transaction that leads to sub-division of a
land parcel or land survey number cannot
already available with be registered in sub-registrar unless the
the government is not hissa or sub-division sketch is created
and given by the survey department.
used and a citizen is Hence, lakhs of requests for land survey

asked to submit and hissa sketch are received from

citizens.
information by
Further, in all encroachment removal
collecting it from drives and even recent natural drains
various arms of the and lake encroachment removal drives
in Bengaluru city it came to light that
government. We are the common man is cheated by

moving towards an unscrupulous builders and real estate

persons who sell them plots created on
integrated information lakes, forest lands, natural drains,
government lands. But a common
system about citizens
Give us an overview of the
Land Survey, Settlement and citizen has no way to know that the
where a citizen need Land Records Department, land being sold to him is illegal or does
Government of Karnataka. not belong to the seller.
not get information
from one part of the The Survey, Settlement and Land Records
(SSLR) department is part of Revenue
Recently ‘DISHAANK’ app
has been launched by your
government to submit Department of the Government of department. This is quite an
to another part of the Karnataka and headed by Commissioner,
SSLR. It has about 4,000 government
innovation when it comes to land
survey. Please shed some light
government.” surveyors and 2,000 licensed surveyors. on this.

52 APRIL 2018 [ egov.eletsonline.com ] The Largest Portal on e-Governance in Asia and the Middle East

Realising that when an ordinary citizen
purchases a property, he or she has no
way to know if the seller is duping him.
Later, when he comes to know about it,
it gets too late to act. Hence, the
solution to the problem lies in
empowering the common citizen
themselves to verify the factual
position of each spot and the land that
is sought to be sold to him.
The result is DISHAANK, which is a
mobile app freely available on Google
PlayStore. By downloading it, the
citizen by mere tapping of a screen can
see the survey number details of any
spot. Therefore, using DISHAANK the
citizen can avoid getting cheated. Also
protects his other friends due to
awareness.
At the heart of DISHAANK is
geo-referenced maps of every survey
number, which are then put up on
satellite image or Google map. So, the
physical property can be seen on
revenue survey maps thereby exposing
which property falls under which
revenue survey number. So, if anyone
tries to sell to anybody a property
actually existing on a lake or forest or a
government land, the citizens can get
informed themselves.
Until now this information could only
be given by the Survey Dept. following
an actual spot survey and making of a
report thereof. Now, the said
information is available in public
domain through DISHAANK.
You are known for the algorithm
you made for Bhoomi land records
portal. How did it all happen and
how it has helped citizens?
Another algorithm that I wrote is called
NameMatching Algorithm. It can
compare two names in any language
and tell whether they are same or not.
This allows us to search the same
person in different databases and use
the information so created. It has been
Connect with us on
also used to find duplicates in the same
database. For example, about 2 lakh
potential duplicate housing
beneficiaries were flagged by the
algorithm. Further, the algorithm does
not allow the same person to obtain
benefits multiple times. Also, it was
used to disburse more than Rs 2,500
crores to over 40 lakh farmers in
Karnataka as crop damage
compensation after ensuring
deduplication.
DISHAANK is a similar action to
prevent cheating of innocent citizens.
How do you perceive more and
more usage of ICT and innovation
for good governance?
The ICT works because it empowers
citizen and enables them to watch their
own interest. It unshackles citizen from
bureaucratic red tape and procedure. It
also allows senior officers and
government to monitor the field work.
The core of good governance is
‘Minimum Government and Maximum
egovonline @egovonline egov magazine
INNOVATION FOR GOVERNANCE
Governance’. The ICT achieves that.
The government and its systems should
be like invisible air -- all breathe and
use air but are unaware of it. The
government that is like air -- invisible
and supportive -- is the best form of
government.
What are the main challenges
when it comes to reaching out
to the last mile with government
services?
The main challenges include:
(i) Archaic procedure which can be
done away with.
(ii) The information already available
with the government is not used
and a citizen is asked to submit
information by collecting it from
various arms of the government.
We are moving towards an
integrated information system
about citizens where a citizen
does not need information from
one part of the government to
submit it to another part of the
government.
(ii) Citizen Self-Service Method
wherein the citizen selects
himself and handles his own fate,
is the best way to reach out to
the last mile. In Karnataka, we
have created caste, income, and
residence certificates for the
entire population. We ask the
citizen to simply print his caste,
income or residence certificate
from his own home or any cyber
cafe rather than run from one
office to another.
(iii) The field level reporting by field
staff is still manual paper-based.
We are converting it into mobile
app based so that both
assignment of work to field
functionary is through mobile and
his report is also received through
mobile. This will expedite delays
and also ensure correct inputs.
Apart from this, we will enable
citizens to submit their own
reports.
APRIL 2018 53