Artificial Intelligence (AI) can do wonders to make human life easy. But the AI for the first time in India, is being to improve governance, that too in a technology-deprived village in Naxalite-infested Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra. The Assistant Collector of Etapalli village in Gadchiroli, Mr Shubham Gupta, is using AI to monitor nutritional level of students after he was shocked to realise that over 25 per cent students of a government-run school were malnourished.
IDENTIFYING THE ISSUE
There are eight Government Ashram schools for tribal children. While visiting these he could see that some girls in the all-girls school situated on Todsa village, were under-nourished. He knew that something was missing as Tribal Ashram School was not constrained for money.
The officer also tied up with the NGO Feeding India to provide these children with an upgraded menu but it could not solve the problem. “Moreover, it is also a difficult job to monitor mid-day meals as it is taken on a large scale and monitoring each and every school is impossible for humans to manage,” Mr Gupta told Indian Masterminds.
ADOPTING AI TECHNOLOGY
Through Zomato the administration tied up with Udyog Yantra who provided an ‘AI-enabled device’ that monitors the nutritional quality and compliance of meals served to children. The pilot project was taken up at this all girls school in Todsa and it was found out that 61 girls out of the total 222 – roughly more than 25 per cent – were under nourished.
Mr. Shubham said, “It was a shocking figure as good quality ration was being provided to the school. We found several reasons like non-compliance of the menu, sub-standard ration, and at times the food cooked in the school was not adequately nutritious.”
The IAS officer took up the task in October last year and within three months nutrition level of girls started going up. The quality of the food provided by the vendors also showed marked improvement.
METHODOLOGY
A child after being served the meal was made to stand in front of the machine which takes a picture of the food and child. “If a child does not take two out three meals in a day, the child is marked absent as it is not possible for a child to have only one meal in a day,” the officer said.
