Govt geeks go hi-tech to mine sentiment

Its members sit huddled over computer screens, applying sophisticated algorithms to trawl hundreds of social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, blogging sites, photo-sharing platforms and the like.

An official, requesting anonymity, denied that privacy would be breached, saying that the terms of engagement specify that data must be anonymous, personal accounts cannot be accessed and information is to be sourced from open content only. HT could not independently confirm this, and a spokesperson for the I&B ministry declined to comment on the project.

The 1,395 analyses done so far categorise feedback as “positive”, “neutral” or “negative”. Unfavourable views of the public are separately highlighted to transform the information into “actionable strategies”, the official said.

For instance, negative remarks on primary healthcare centres are directed to the health secretary for action.

An analysis of Swachh Bharat, the government’s national sanitation project, showed 53% of the opinions, representing 275 million mentions, were “positive” and 42% or 218 million mentions were neutral, while 5% or 26 million mentions were “negative”.

The Pradhan Mantri Jan Dhan Yojana, a financial inclusion scheme, had 31% favourable sentiments, 60% “neutral” sentiments and 9% negative views.

“Unless you tap into social media spaces, you cannot get good political feedback these days. The dinner-table talk has moved online,” said blogger Raju K Sheshan. According to the Pew Research Center, younger users are more likely to “share their political views” and post “political or social material” than older users.

International events are scanned too, such as the Sydney café siege. There is prime focus on events in Pakistan.

The reports also help the government have an ear to the political ground. On January 9, for instance, it tracked the hashtag “#CongwithKejriwal” and President Pranab Mukherjee’s statement on the Opposition’s disruption of Parliament.

“His (Kumar’s) tone and tenor was insulting… made several false statements to exonerate himself and the contractors, misleading the members in the course of discharge of their responsibilities as MPs, which is breach of privilege,” said BJP MP and former Union home secretary RK Singh in his report to the LS Speaker, requesting that the matter be examined by the privilege committee for further action.

“They (parliamentarians) have a right to dignity while engaged in their duties,” added Singh, who also attached a detailed list of Kumar’s “false statements” regarding road projects in Bihar.

For instance, Kumar reportedly told them that the construction of the approach to Digha Bridge in Patna had to be cancelled because land was not available. “In fact, the 12-km stretch on the Patna side was government land, which was handed over to the contractor. He was given a mobilisation advance and he did work for only 2.6% in two years,” said the MPs in their annexure to the privilege notice.

One MP said Kumar was “callous” during the discussion about the condition of road projects in Bihar.

“We were talking about the terrible condition of roads and slow progress of road projects in Bihar. He (Kumar) was very callous and casual. Woh gandi tarah se baat kar raha tha (he was talking in an improper manner),” BJP MP Kirti Azad, one of the signatories, told HT.

It’s rare for so many MPs to move a privilege notice against a serving bureaucrat. Kumar, in his capacity as officer on special duty (OSD) to then railways minister Lalu Yadav, was said to be instrumental in the turnaround of the railways with a surplus of about `1 lakh crore.

Lalu’s successors, however, alleged the surplus was a result of changes in accounting methods. The 1982 batch IAS officer from the Bihar cadre later co-authored a book titled “Bankruptcy to Billions: How the Indian Railways Transformed Itself ”.

Kumar refused to comment saying, “I haven’t got it (privilege notice) yet.” The Lok Sabha Secretariat recently sent a copy of the notice to the road transport

& highways ministry which is learnt to have forwarded the notice to Kumar on Friday.

RK Singh also declined comment on the notice. “We have written what we felt. It is not something that we bandy about in the press,” he said.

But Pooja has more than her academic achievements to fall back on. The mobile app she developed analyses speech patterns and predicts if a person has Parkinson’s disease with 96% accuracy.

She founded ProjectCSGIRLS after her sophomore year as a “response to the tech gender gap that was glaringly noticeable in her computer science classes”. “I was one of only three girls in my AP Computer Science class freshman year, so that’s what motivated me to start ProjectCSGIRLS as a way of encouraging more girls to become future leaders in technology and computer science,” she said.

Not content with encouraging girls in the US to pursue careers in technology, Pooja said she would also like to do something similar in India.

“I would love to help girls in India take to careers in technology! We’re actually working on launching an international computer science competition through ProjectCSGIRLS for students outside of the US and we hope to get that up and running next year,” she said.

“I’m also hoping to get involved with biomedical engineering and computational neuroscience research throughout college and medical school since I’ve loved doing research during my high school years and have been recognised as an Intel Science Talent Search Semifinalist and Siemens Competition National Semifinalist,” she added.

Pooja said her parents — her mother works as a software engineer and her dad as a network engineer — immigrated from Bengaluru nearly 25 years ago. “They obtained their master’s degrees here in the US — my mom at Arizona State University and my dad at Texas A&M. I do still have family in Bangalore and Mysore and I do still visit India,” she said.

Pooja spent her summers attending programmes in robotics and tinkered with web design and game programming. In middle school, she built a

to explore the prospects of renewable energy.

As a summer intern at the MITRE Corporation, a not-forprofit organisation that operates research and development centres sponsored by the US government, Pooja impressed older colleagues by working on a diagnostic tool for determining early signs of mild traumatic brain injuries (mTBI), said James S Ellenbogen, chief scientist of emerging technologies at MITRE. Despite her accomplishments, Pooja is like most other teenagers. She enjoys watching TV shows like Shark Tank, listening to Bollywood music and exploring restaurants.

She’s also a fan of the Food Network and is amazed by chefs who show off their skills in the kitchen. It’s one subject, she admits, she hasn’t mastered.

“I can’t cook for my life,” Pooja told the Washington Post. “But it’s fun to imagine I can.”

An MP government official, however, said it was part of the national drive to bring all government schemes under the Aadhaar platform. “The instructions have come from the prime minister’s office and we are just following the order,” the official said.

Similarly, in Andhra, state electoral officers are refusing to enroll new voters unless they have an Aadhaar number. The Election Commission has set a

deadline of August 2015 to embed Aadhaar numbers in the electoral rolls of 820 million voters across India and chief electoral officers have been issued directions to meet the deadline.

“Election Commission officers are blatantly refusing to enroll those who don’t have an Aadhaar number in violation of the law which prescribes that a person has to provide age and address as proof for enrollment,” said a government official.

Chief election commissioner HS Brahma has said Aadhaar is not mandatory for enrollment.

The Andhra government has also issued directions that people can seek entitlements, including work under NREGA, only if they have an Aadhaar number. In Visakhapatnam district, about 64,217 people have lost cooking gas subsidies as they failed to submit their Aadhaar numbers on time.

In Himachal, officials said, instructions have been issued that the government will not provide any entitlement if the person fails to provide an Aadhaar number. Similar directions have been issued in Haryana and Rajasthan.

Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) officials said over 850 million Aadhaar numbers have been generated and they were on track to meet the June 2015 deadline for enrolling all eligible Indian residents for the world’s biggest biometric collection mechanism.