Page 209 - PDI_Report

Acknowledgements

The Committee would like to place on record its deep appreciation of the extraordinary and excellent work done by
esteemed Member of the Committee, Dr. Mallinath Kalshetti, DDG/Director, SIRD, YASHADA, Pune and his Team
in Maharashtra consisting of core State level Team of Shri Shridhar Kulkarni, State Coordinator & Extension Officer,
Z.P. Sangali, Shri Anil Bagate, State Coordinator & Gram Sevak, Wadebolhai, Haveli, Shri Anil Waghmare, BDO,
Khandala and Shri Pramod Kalekar, Senior Consultant-Decentralised Governance and SDG Localisation, UNICEF,
Mumbai, and the entire team who were involved in data collection in the field. The challenging exercise of field data
collection at primary source, to assess the availability of data, for each of the data points in the entire LIF, was taken
up by them and that paved the way for this Report.
Again to Dr. Kalshetti, for the excellent arrangements made by Dr Kalshetti and his team in organising the
Consultative workshop and field visit which is much appreciated by the Committee. The Committee also would like to
thank the people of Jambul Panchayat, where the Committee had gone on the Field visit.

We acknowledge Shri Senthamizhan, Data Scientist, IIT Madras, under the guidance of Dr. Ravindran, Professor,
Department of Computer Science and Engineering, IIT, Madras, for having kindly agreed to extend support that
enabled data collection, cleaning and initial data analysis.
It would not have been possible to translate the extraordinary data collection work of the Maharashtra Team into this
Report, but for the excellent work done on the calculations, data analysis and presentation of Findings by Ms. Nidhi
Gupta, Consultant, Data and Technology, National PMU, The Nudge Institute, and Ms. Sudha Srinivasan, CEO, The
Nudge Centre for Social Innovation, who agreed to do this gratis, for the larger purpose it would serve.

The data analysis glimpses from a detailed presentation by NIC has been taken from the untiring and enthusiastic work
of Ms. Sunita Jain, Senior Director, IT, NIC, Delhi, who along with Shri Ayush Kalia, Programmer Contractual, NIC,
were drawn into this by esteemed Member Shri Sunil Jain, Deputy Director General, NIC, MoPR, which would be of

substantial use to MoPR in the future.
I would like to acknowledge the inputs from Shri U. Aravindan, Assistant Director, Department of Economics and
Statistics, Government of Tamilnadu, and Dr R. Sujatha, Consultant, SDG, Department of Planning and Development,
GoTN, and Ms. S. Varalakshmi, PS to DG, RD & PR Training, GoTN, for her support in typing parts of the Report.

The PDI Committee Report design, layout and bringing to full print shape is to the credit of dedicated work of
Shri M. Kranthi Kiran, Instructional Designer, NIRDPR. The Committee would like to acknowledge Dr Narendra
Kumar, DG, NIRDPR in having permitted Shri Kranthi to take this up and esteemed Member, Dr Anjan Kumar
Bhanja, Associate Professor, NIRDPR for having taken this on.

The response from the Ministries in meeting with the Committee and giving clarifications, valuable inputs and
suggestions, is acknowledged.

The participation of UNICEF in the Committee Meeting for Child friendly Panchayat is noteworthy.
In the MoPR, we acknowledge as highly praiseworthy, Ms. Piyali Roy Chowdhury, Consultant, for the substance,
content and work with involvement and dedication in the preparation of this Report. The Committee would also like to
acknowledge Dr Bharat Chandra Rout, Consultant, who joined the MoPR Team enabling the completion of the
Report; and other Consultants in MoPR, especially Shri Manoj Sharma, Ms. Pooja Sharma and Ms. Chandrani Saha
for their contributions.
The support from Officers of MoPR, special mention of Dr. C.S. Kumar, Additional Secretary, MoPR, is
acknowledged with thanks.

183