The Azim Premji University (APU) in Bengaluru has put together an online booklet that lists all the major government announcements made till now with respect to Coronavirus relief measures amid the countrywide lockdown. The language is simple and the booklet is also being translated in regional languages and booklets consisting of state-level orders so that it's more accessible to community workers and grassroots activists.
Amit Basole, a faculty at Azim Premji University and a part of this initiative says, "In the last couple of weeks we have seen that a lot of news, non-profit organisations have been carrying a list of the government orders — central and state — that have been released stating the various relief measures taken amid the lockdown for the COVID-19 outbreak. Some of us here at the varsity had already put all the information together in a spreadsheet and put it up online for anyone to use. We thought it will be useful to present it in an easy to digest way that will be of help to volunteers, people who are out there so that they know what are the entitlements that have been announced. That was the aim behind it."
The booklet has been created by a group of both faculty and students from various schools and post-doctoral fellows at APU. "All of us have gone through the spreadsheets we had prepared earlier, so we just had to put it across in a simpler, comprehensible format. We have finished the Union Government schemes, we will bring out the state in the next week possibly," adds Amit. The booklet consists of schemes like the PM Kisan Yojana, MGNREGA, PM Ujjawala Yojana etc and it also specifies what is being provided under them, to which communities and how it is available.
The booklet can currently be accessed on the varsity official website and is in a printable format for anyone who would like to print it out. Amit states that the work on it began earlier this week around the time of the last weekend and the team has been working for the past four to five days. "The hardest part of it was done before last week that is collecting the orders, so in making the booklet we just had to write it down in simpler language. We sat together and wrote it in bullet points. Our in-house communication and design team did the simple layout for publishing to make it a tad bit more attractive for people to read," he says.
However, Amit says that the booklet needs a wider reach. "We are trying to connect to networks of activists, NGOs, other welfare organisations through WhatsApp and other platforms to make it available to as many people as possible," he adds.
