Even as Union Railway Minister Lalu Prasad takes potshots at Bihar CM Nitish Kumar’s “technical” background, Kumar has pressed into service the latest technology for monitoring relief operations, preparing records of the missing persons and soliciting donations, in an apparent bid to fend off the “flood of charges being traded by various parties”.

Bihar Government officials said they needed to supplement the deployment of thousands of Government employees with sophisticated technologies to speed up the monitoring of feedback from the spots, currently dependent on intermittent telephone updates and reports submitted by District Magistrates.

The State Disaster Management Department has deployed six teams of “mobile inspectors”, who tour the various relief camps in the five flood-hit districts incognito and take photographs of the food being served, sanitary conditions and presence of Government officials at the camps at any given time.

Disaster Management Principal Secretary RK Singh told The Indian Express: “Just when a mobile inspector, who can pass off as a commoner, pretends to talk to someone on his mobile phone, he is actually clicking pictures of the unsatisfactory status of a camp”.

There is a proper format loaded in the GPRS-enabled mobile phone to fill in the correct number of working toilets, estimated number of relief-seekers, types of food being served and related queries, he said. Singh and Additional Commissioner Pratyay Amrit promptly receive an e-mail from the spot and take it up with the DM concerned for fast redressal of the problem. Amrit said: “A DM, at times, is surprised at our fast feedback”.

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