Department of Science and Technology (DST) issued a new set of guidelines under the National Map Policy 2005. For the first time, the government has made it clear that ordinary citizens can create, collect, publish, and keep maps (both physical and digital) without asking the government for permission or getting security approvals. This is a welcome step that should have been taken decades ago.
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It stands in stark contrast to the draconian Draft Geospatial Information Regulation Bill, 2016, which effectively banned the acquisition of geospatial data (i.e., mapping information) without a government licence. Had it passed, it would effectively have rendered all unlicensed maps (or even collecting of underlying data for a map) illegal, and in its plain reading would have penalized students drawing inaccurate maps during their geography lesson. Thankfully, that proposed Bill never materialized into an Act.
The contrast between the guidelines and the Bill shows how the central government is not a monolith: different bureaucrats and ministers take drastically different approaches to the same issue.
Before getting into the advantages of the move, here is a rundown on what the data means:
What is geospatial data?
Geospatial data represents features or objects on the Earth’s surface. Whether it’s man-made or natural, if it has to do with a specific location on the globe, then it’s geospatial.
How is geospatial data used?
The most common use of geospatial data is within a GIS (Geographic Information System) to understand spatial relationships and to create maps describing these relationships. A GIS can also help you regulate, customize, and analyze geospatial data.
How will this help Indian tech companies?
Geospatial data is foundational and will play a vital role in every manner of planning, governance, services, infrastructure, and applications.
A Boost to Open-Source Mapping
The new guidelines emphasize mapping data as an asset to be used for India’s benefit. With the new guidelines, high resolution mapping by private citizens, which in some cases was already being undertaken in a gray zone of legal uncertainty, will become clearly legal.
“Street view” maps, which show photographs superimposed onto maps to create a virtual reality experience, are also legalized. Importantly, all existing geospatial data produced by any central government entity using public funds is required to be publicly shared—free of charge with other government departments, and at a “fair and transparent” fee for others.
Given how guarded departments have been of their data, this is quite revolutionary. However, as with the National Data Sharing and Accessibility Policy, the National Open Standards Policy, and the RTI Act, revolutionary policies and laws are only as revolutionary as their implementation would allow them to be. There is some room for improvement: non-commercial use of the data should be exempted from fees. Citizens should not be made to pay for non-commercial usage of data that they’ve themselves funded with their taxes.
These guidelines are welcome news to India’s burgeoning community of open-source mapping. The largest such volunteer-driven mapping effort, OpenStreetMap (OSM), powers everything from the maps used by taxi aggregators to those used by the United Nations for disaster relief missions. India has unique addressing and navigation challenges that can only be solved through localized research and standardization.
In a city like Bengaluru, streets can be one-way one day and one-way in the reverse direction the next, and often directions are used instead of addresses. Such bureaucratic caprice and mapping realities can only be reflected in a digital map with some amount of accuracy by decentralized volunteer-driven projects, which have the potential to be both faster and more detailed. Further, if you go to remote parts of India, such as the hinterlands of Himachal Pradesh, you will find that commercial maps such as Google Maps do not provide nearly the same amount of detail as volunteer-driven OSM, to which anyone can contribute.
Need Collaboration, not Protectionism
While the new guidelines bring much-necessary liberalization, they come along with some protectionist measures as well. They prevent non-Indian entities from enjoying the new licence-free regime. They also require that maps with spatial accuracy greater than 1 metre horizontally or 3 metres vertically be created by an Indian entity and stored on Indian servers.
This could potentially jeopardize open mapping—while it is predominantly Indians who contribute to efforts like OSM, there’s no restriction placed in such a volunteer-driven effort. Further, OSM servers are located all over the globe, and it is unclear why an India-located server is better.
Lastly, it is also unclear whether these regulations are in line with India’s obligations under the WTO’s GATS (General Agreement on Trade in Services) framework. A better way to promote Atmanirbhar Bharat in this sector would be to stop depending on foreign companies by requiring government entities to use only maps generated by Indian entities, which are openly licenced, and put no burden on the exchequer.
We have seen the government collaborate with mapping communities in the past. For instance, Mapathon Keralam was launched in 2019 by the Kerala State IT Mission and volunteers to map critical assets in the state for emergency and rescue operations, and was found to be very useful by the Kerala government.
We need more such collaborations to improve everything, from disaster management to bus schedules and routing. To enable this, administration at all levels—central, state, municipal, and taluk—need to work with civic hackers, and ways and means must be found to encourage public-spirited technologists as well as the commercial mapping industry.
As the guidelines recognize, the government also needs to bring other policies, such as those covering remote-sensing and the national spatial data infrastructure, in line with the new guidelines, and streamline the flow of data within the government.
Importantly, stakeholders should be publicly consulted before the formulation of further guidelines and policies, since they can advise the government on how to unlock the full potential of mapping through the usage of open standards and APIs (for technical interoperability), open licences (for legal interoperability), and open metadata and vocabularies (for semantic interoperability), along with insights into civic and developmental issues to tackle with technology.
The DST has shown great sagacity through this commitment to removing the yoke of superfluous regulations that has held India back: now we must move forward to translate this into results on the ground.
Recent Posts
- In the Large States category (overall), Chhattisgarh ranks 1st, followed by Odisha and Telangana, whereas, towards the bottom are Maharashtra at 16th, Assam at 17th and Gujarat at 18th. Gujarat is one State that has seen startling performance ranking 5th in the PAI 2021 Index outperforming traditionally good performing States like Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, but ranks last in terms of Delta
- In the Small States category (overall), Nagaland tops, followed by Mizoram and Tripura. Towards the tail end of the overall Delta ranking is Uttarakhand (9th), Arunachal Pradesh (10th) and Meghalaya (11th). Nagaland despite being a poor performer in the PAI 2021 Index has come out to be the top performer in Delta, similarly, Mizoram’s performance in Delta is also reflected in it’s ranking in the PAI 2021 Index
- In terms of Equity, in the Large States category, Chhattisgarh has the best Delta rate on Equity indicators, this is also reflected in the performance of Chhattisgarh in the Equity Pillar where it ranks 4th. Following Chhattisgarh is Odisha ranking 2nd in Delta-Equity ranking, but ranks 17th in the Equity Pillar of PAI 2021. Telangana ranks 3rd in Delta-Equity ranking even though it is not a top performer in this Pillar in the overall PAI 2021 Index. Jharkhand (16th), Uttar Pradesh (17th) and Assam (18th) rank at the bottom with Uttar Pradesh’s performance in line with the PAI 2021 Index
- Odisha and Nagaland have shown the best year-on-year improvement under 12 Key Development indicators.
- In the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Goa and Tamil Nadu and, the bottom three performers are Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar.
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers were Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim and Mizoram; and, the bottom three performers are Manipur, Assam and Meghalaya.
- Among the 60:40 division States, Orissa, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh are the top three performers and Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Delhi appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh and Nagaland; and, the bottom three performers are Jammu and Kashmir, Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh
- Among the 60:40 division States, Goa, West Bengal and Delhi appear as the top three performers and Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Bihar appear as the bottom three performers.
- Among the 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh and Tripura were the top three performers and Jammu & Kashmir, Nagaland and Arunachal Pradesh were the bottom three performers
- West Bengal, Bihar and Tamil Nadu were the top three States amongst the 60:40 division States; while Haryana, Punjab and Rajasthan appeared as the bottom three performers
- In the case of 90:10 division States, Mizoram, Assam and Tripura were the top three performers and Nagaland, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttarakhand featured as the bottom three
- Among the 60:40 division States, the top three performers are Kerala, Andhra Pradesh and Orissa and the bottom three performers are Madhya Pradesh, Jharkhand and Goa
- In the 90:10 division States, the top three performers are Mizoram, Sikkim and Nagaland and the bottom three performers are Manipur and Assam
In a diverse country like India, where each State is socially, culturally, economically, and politically distinct, measuring Governance becomes increasingly tricky. The Public Affairs Index (PAI 2021) is a scientifically rigorous, data-based framework that measures the quality of governance at the Sub-national level and ranks the States and Union Territories (UTs) of India on a Composite Index (CI).
States are classified into two categories – Large and Small – using population as the criteria.
In PAI 2021, PAC defined three significant pillars that embody Governance – Growth, Equity, and Sustainability. Each of the three Pillars is circumscribed by five governance praxis Themes.
The themes include – Voice and Accountability, Government Effectiveness, Rule of Law, Regulatory Quality and Control of Corruption.
At the bottom of the pyramid, 43 component indicators are mapped to 14 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) that are relevant to the States and UTs.
This forms the foundation of the conceptual framework of PAI 2021. The choice of the 43 indicators that go into the calculation of the CI were dictated by the objective of uncovering the complexity and multidimensional character of development governance
The Equity Principle
The Equity Pillar of the PAI 2021 Index analyses the inclusiveness impact at the Sub-national level in the country; inclusiveness in terms of the welfare of a society that depends primarily on establishing that all people feel that they have a say in the governance and are not excluded from the mainstream policy framework.
This requires all individuals and communities, but particularly the most vulnerable, to have an opportunity to improve or maintain their wellbeing. This chapter of PAI 2021 reflects the performance of States and UTs during the pandemic and questions the governance infrastructure in the country, analysing the effectiveness of schemes and the general livelihood of the people in terms of Equity.
Growth and its Discontents
Growth in its multidimensional form encompasses the essence of access to and the availability and optimal utilisation of resources. By resources, PAI 2021 refer to human resources, infrastructure and the budgetary allocations. Capacity building of an economy cannot take place if all the key players of growth do not drive development. The multiplier effects of better health care, improved educational outcomes, increased capital accumulation and lower unemployment levels contribute magnificently in the growth and development of the States.
The Pursuit Of Sustainability
The Sustainability Pillar analyses the access to and usage of resources that has an impact on environment, economy and humankind. The Pillar subsumes two themes and uses seven indicators to measure the effectiveness of government efforts with regards to Sustainability.
The Curious Case Of The Delta
The Delta Analysis presents the results on the State performance on year-on-year improvement. The rankings are measured as the Delta value over the last five to 10 years of data available for 12 Key Development Indicators (KDI). In PAI 2021, 12 indicators across the three Pillars of Equity (five indicators), Growth (five indicators) and Sustainability (two indicators). These KDIs are the outcome indicators crucial to assess Human Development. The Performance in the Delta Analysis is then compared to the Overall PAI 2021 Index.
Key Findings:-
In the Scheme of Things
The Scheme Analysis adds an additional dimension to ranking of the States on their governance. It attempts to complement the Governance Model by trying to understand the developmental activities undertaken by State Governments in the form of schemes. It also tries to understand whether better performance of States in schemes reflect in better governance.
The Centrally Sponsored schemes that were analysed are National Health Mission (NHM), Umbrella Integrated Child Development Services scheme (ICDS), Mahatma Gandh National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS), Samagra Shiksha Abhiyan (SmSA) and MidDay Meal Scheme (MDMS).
National Health Mission (NHM)
INTEGRATED CHILD DEVELOPMENT SERVICES (ICDS)
MID- DAY MEAL SCHEME (MDMS)
SAMAGRA SHIKSHA ABHIYAN (SMSA)
MAHATMA GANDHI NATIONAL RURAL EMPLOYMENT GUARANTEE SCHEME (MGNREGS)