New phones, old woes: anganwadi workers struggle with patchy Internet, digital disconnect in U.P. villages

Account subscription benefits alongside Premium Stories, Editorials, Opinions and more. Unlock these with Subscription The View From India Looking at World Affairs from the Indian perspective. First Day First Show News and reviews from the world of cinema and streaming. Today's Cache Your download of the top 5 technology stories of the day. Data Point Decoding the headlines with facts, figures, and numbers Health Matters Ramya Kannan writes to you on getting to good health, and staying there The Hindu On Books Books of the week, reviews, excerpts, new titles and features. Spotty Internet connectivity is adding to the woes, said workers. | Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma In the villages of Uttar Pradesh’s Naugarh block in Chandauli district, surrounded by forests on all sides, Internet connectivity is still patchy in several areas. While anganwadi workers received new mobile phones this month from the government, accompanied with expectations of conducting a chunk of their work online, connectivity issues were not taken into consideration, they said. During a meeting at Amdaha village, anganwadi workers from other villages in the block, including Marwatiya, Deori Kalan, and Baghi, said spotty Internet connectivity is adding to the woes of workers already saddled with unmanageable workloads. “Sometimes the Poshan Tracker app does not register the faces of beneficiaries due to network issues and we cannot give them the ration they are entitled to,” a 50-year old worker said. Last year, the Ministry of Women and Child Development (WCD) mandated facial recognition authentication for beneficiaries comprising pregnant and lactating mothers as well as children up to the age of six. The Hindu reached out to the WCD Ministry with a detailed set of questions but has not received any response till the time of going to press. Moreover, not everyone is equipped to deal with technology equally, the workers said. One of the younger workers in the block, in her 20s, said many of the older workers call her for help while they are at work but she is hardly able to resolve the issues herself. “The Poshan app keeps getting updated every few days... but if the workers do not understand the features, how would they coordinate with others?” she said. They also pointed out that they are unable to use WhatsApp because it is not loaded on the phones, which only have apps such as Poshan, a GPS tracker app, and other State scheme-specific apps.“We have to take our photos on the GPS tracker, which will show our face and our location. Then we send that to our our supervi