Odisha Pushes Data-Driven Governance in PRAYAS Social Review

30 Sep 2026, 08:24 by Vinay Kakkad · KalingaTV

Odisha Chief Secretary Anu Garg has directed district administrations and line departments to transition from routine administrative oversight to an aggressive, data-driven governance framework. Reviewing the state’s key welfare indicators under the PRAYAS platform at Lok Seva Bhawan, Garg instructed district collectors and departmental secretaries to translate real-time field data into concrete, time-bound interventions.

The comprehensive review evaluated performance benchmarks across three primary pillars: healthcare, nutrition, and foundational schooling.

Healthcare & Maternal-Infant Survival

Odisha health authorities reported a noticeable drop in both maternal and neonatal fatalities across districts, credited to tighter referral pathways, regular inspections, and prompt clinical care.

Specialized Newborn Care: Critical interventions saved extremely low-birth-weight infants, including a 500-gram newborn who recovered after 78 days of treatment at the Nabarangpur District Headquarters Hospital (discharged at 1.6 kg), and a 900-gram premature baby treated successfully in Mayurbhanj.

Clinical Standards: District collectors were ordered to conduct mandatory monthly health reviews alongside Chief District Medical and Public Health Officers (CDM&PHOs). Directives stressed strict labor-room infection control, hospital waste disposal, hand hygiene, and steady staffing and medicine pipelines.

Decentralized Success: Rayagada’s targeted screening and iron supplementation campaign against adolescent anaemia, alongside Angul’s model for curbing maternal deaths, were earmarked for statewide replication.

TB Elimination Drive

Tuberculosis eradication featured as a critical priority ahead of national targets. Under the 100-Day Campaign 2.0 of the “TB Mukt Bharat Abhiyan”:

Field teams have pinpointed 13,271 vulnerable pockets (villages and urban wards) across Odisha for intensified contact tracing and treatment follow-ups.
Block-level senior nodal officers will manage ground implementation, while collectors ensure full utilization of diagnostic X-ray units and organize specialized screening camps in remote geographies.
Campaign outcomes will undergo bi-monthly reviews via the PRAYAS and PRAGATI platforms.

Child Nutrition & Poshan Tracker

The review highlighted marked progress under the Women and Child Development portfolio, showing a steep drop in Severe and Moderate Acute Malnutrition (SAM/MAM) figures:

Administrative monitoring will rely heavily on digital updates via the ‘Poshan Tracker’, backed by routine home visits, regular child growth assessments, and training modules for Anganwadi workers.
Household-level dietary security is being pushed through decentralized homestead farming and nutrition gardens, supported by seedling distribution networks run in partnership with women’s Self-Help Groups (SHGs).

Foundational Learning

Assessing school education against the School Education Performance Grading Index (PGI), the review zeroed in on basic literacy and numeracy benchmarks in primary institutions:

Collectors were tasked with expediting the deployment of teachers to deficit schools, upgrading hostel facilities, and fast-tracking classes in upgraded higher secondary institutions.
To curb classroom dropouts, district teams have been instructed to build sustained engagement between educators, parents, and community bodies, while ensuring the consistent use of targeted teaching-learning materials (TLM).