Hyderabad Wears A Deserted Look, As Survey Brings State To Standstill

August 19, 2014 5:47 pm

Greater Hyderabad, with more than a million population, wore a deserted look today with normally busy and congested roads getting completely empty.

Transport services have been stopped, offices, education institutes closed and cinema theatres, petrol stations shut down — the Telangana government ewent all out to make every one in the new state’s population is counted and their socio-economic status profiled on Tuesday.

People have moved in large numbers to their villages to register, while Telangana migrants from out-of-state came home for the same purpose. Though the State Govt stated that people need not be in native places for the survey, people took no chances and deserted the city and went to native places to attend survey there.

With nobody and no vehicles on the roads, all shops and hotels closed, a curfew-like situation prevailed. Right from the old city around Charminar to the Hitec City, the hub of information technology, all the busy centres were quiet.

In a determined bid to help efforts to collect accurate data from all the households, the Telangana government announced a general holiday to enable people to take part in the survey. The government had also declared that no buses would ply during the day.

The purpose of the survey, brainchild of chief minister KCR, is to keep in check the undeserving claimants of schemes like subsidised ration, scholarships, pensions, houses etc.

An estimated 400,000 enumerators, mostly government employees, teachers, policemen, started the house to house survey in Hyderabad and other districts early in the morning.

The survey form is in three languages — Telugu, Urdu and English — had questions regarding personal information like number of family members, name, age, education, house details, electricity, water and gas connection, employment status, details of properties. It also had optional questions like Income Tax details, bank or post office accounts. Each family had to fill 3 pages of data.

Among many basic things, the survey will throw light on the actual number of households in the State, which is sort of mystery now, with numbers ranging between 8 and 10 million.