Mapping India: National Urban GIS

This project initiated by the Central Government to create a city level Geographic Information Systems (GIS) database for 152 cities and towns all over India has a lot of merit. If implemented to its full potential by individual cities, it could knock some sense in the day to day governance of Indian cities and help prepare for their planned growth.

GIS for urban applications has lagged behind GIS for natural resource application in India. There are probably many reasons for this. Institutional inertia, lack of awareness, inadequate city budgets and the high expense of creating detailed spatial datasets; all these or different combinations of these factors in different cities have prevented GIS from playing a constructive role in city planning.

The National Urban Mapping Mission looks to change all this. Funding for developing 1:10,000 and 1:2000 scale spatial datasets will be provided by the Central Government (75%) and the State Government (25%). The Survey of India which is the National Mapping agency will take charge of data creation. There will be deadlines, timelines, capacity building , performance measures... all the corporate buzzwords for successful project management are being pressed into service. The end result will be seamless city level spatial datasets, all relevant information needed to run the city just a mouse click away.