This story is from October 6, 2018

ISB, Tenure Facility work with forest communities to collect data

ISB, Tenure Facility work with forest communities to collect data
Hyderabad: In a bid to better equip communities living in the forest regions of the country to better utilise their land resources, premier city-based B-School, the Indian School of Business (ISB), in collaboration with The Tenure Facility has embarked on a pilot project that will offer a digital platform to these communities to collect and record their own data.

The Tenure Facility is a multi-stakeholder financial body focused on securing land and forest rights for indigenous peoples and local communities by providing grants to implement tenure rights under existing law and policy. It has provided a $2 million funding to ISB for this project in India.
ISB has already started working in Gadchiroli in Maharashtra and Rajnandgaon in Chhattisgarh and will be rolling it out soon in Kandhamal in Odisha. “We are developing a web-based application that communities can use in their local language to collect their own data and use it themselves, not only for planning but also to interface with government agencies…especially in the case of government programmes such as MNREGA,” Ashwini Chhatre, associate professor of public policy, ISB, said.
Citing the example of the kind of data being collected by locals, especially the youth, he said, to start with, data regarding Tendu leaves auction or sale of certain forest produce are being collected.
“We are working with communities that have land titles, hence, they are easier to work with,” he added.
The state governments too have welcomed the efforts of ISB as they are starved of good data, which is essential for devising policies. Even as ISB executes the project, Chhatre said the biggest challenge is internet connectivity. However, technological tools are being deployed to allow them to work offline and upload data whenever there is access to internet connectivity, he added.
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