Madhya Pradesh ASER2010 experience

It was 4th February 2011 when i reached Bhopal for ASER 2010 resurvey in M.P. After 3 days of orientation we moved to our respective districts. My district was Balaghat, a big district with eight blocks. After reaching there we found that it would be better to conduct the survey in a single phase rather than two phase. So we planned to raised volunteers. We targeted B. Ed colleges for our purpose. We got a very wonderful response from the colleges and we successfully collected 54 volunteers for the survey. All volunteers were B. Ed students and were very keen to the survey.

After that we conducted our training session according to the schedule. In between the training two person from a local NGO came to the venue. They were interested to participate in the process. They tried to convince us about their creditability. Suddenly they changed their topic and came to monetary matter. They asked about our budget and I told them. After listening to the budget they became less interested. After that they start questioning on ASER reports reliability. I tried my best to convince them but they were not listening. They started advising me regarding the survey process. After listening to their advices I offered them to have a field visit with us. They went away without saying anything.

During the Survey period I was very busy and i forgot about them. After the completion of survey, while our rechecking process was going on they again came to me. Now they are with a different issue. They started blaming us that we are following a wrong process and what ever results coming is not realistic. Balaghat is a very developed district with respect of education. What ever reports come from government Balaghat always do well. Almost all students go to Pvt school. I was surprised to know about that. What a myopic analysis was that. I did not tell them any thing. I just sow them few of our formates and met few of our volunteers. After seeing the formates and listening to the volunteers they had nothing to say. They went away. After wards i went to know that actually they were messenger of District Education Department.