Guhar, an app that helps Bastar residents file complaints in Halbi and Gondi

Bridging the language divide, an engineering student of Bastar in Chhattisgarh has developed a language translator mobile application called “Guhar” or prayer, through which the locals can lodge their complaints in their local dialects– Halbi and Gondi—while the government departments receive them in Hindi.

The app also helps local tribes in lodging complaints through a text or voice message in their own languages, which gets translated into an official language before reaching the inbox of a government official in the Bastar region.

“The problem was getting the codes for the local dialects,” said Ankur Sinha, student of a local engineering college, who developed the application.

“Last year, I along with my team met the district administration offering a grievance-reporting application and then we developed ‘Guhar’. The idea is to redress the problem of those who are unable to reach government offices,” Sinha said and added that Guhaar was being offered in multiple languages.

He says the application is a block-chain based portal in which all the complaints are traceable and can be lodged from smart phones and feature phones. Guhaar also has a voice addition feature for recording the complaint with photos.

“Soon a WhatsApp feature is being introduced to file complaints.” Sinha said.

Till now, more than 500 complaints filed through the app have been resolved by the district administration of Bastar including directions to include certain families in the public distribution system and issuance of caste certificates, apart from addressing social issues like ill-treatment of senior citizens.

Bastar administration believes that the application has a strong grievance redress mechanism.

“Through this application, we are trying to bridge the gap between the common citizen and the administration. In the coming time, we will put all complaints which come to us through various portals or departments under one umbrella,” said collector Bastar, Rajat Bansal.

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Probationary IAS officer posted in the district, Abinash Misra, the brain behind the application, said the idea is to reduce unnecessary rush of people every day at various government offices. As people travel long distances, they lose their wages also. Through Guhaar, people can file their complaints easily,” he said.

Misra said, through this app, senior officers can also fix responsibility of the personnel, who do not act on the complaint in a time bound manner. Earlier, complaints used to remain in files for years.

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Shubhrashu Chaudhary, an activist and a writer, who is also working with this project by providing transcripts of local dialects, says ‘Guhar’ in its current form helps only the privileged few. “The application can have a good reach if we provide Bluetooth, locally called Bultoo, linkage to help people to send messages where internet connection is poor,” he said.

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