Enabling use of Geospatial Tools and Techniques for Assisting Rural Employment Generation in India-challenges and Opportunities

With the impetus placed on MGNREGA to make it natural resource management based process under the PMKSY umbrella, need to implement geospatial technologies is felt strongly across majority of stakeholders. Convergence possible by the use of geospatial tools and techniques is certainly of a higher degree than perceived till now, especially from the inception of the plan till implementation monitoring. Efforts of ISRO in this regard span various national initiatives addressing rural employment, roads, housing, agriculture infrastructure, watershed development and many more on respective geospatial modules through Bhuvan. At national level, a comprehensive online, open source GIS environment based planning system is envisaged involving spectrum of functionaries and beneficiaries using geotagged asset datasets, legacy information as well as high resolution image series. However,applying Bhuvan based planning tools for rural development to achieve NRM based solutions can be a challenge since concerned functionaries or participating stakeholders may exhibit genuine or feigned aversion for the solution. On the other hand, skill upgradation being witnessed often, by efforts of government institutions as well as self-learning due to the inherent strength of technology, will certainly present opportunities to harness and upscale. Experiences at national level in infusing technology paradigms related to internet connectivity, mobile telephony indicate situations of varied potential. Since remote sensing based visualisation provides higher scope in understanding, analysing and collaboration for realising good NRM plan than conventional trial and error approach, a discussion regarding the challenges and opportunities in this direction is presented. Higher spatial and temporal frequency of imaging coupled with easy to handle interface can certainly appeal to the imagination of the motivated citizens for building a state of the art village development planning and lasting rural development.