Nerve Endings Firing Away

Ever since I have become familiar with the possibilities that GIS presents for local city planning and development, I have wondered why hasn’t it been utilized yet in medium-sized towns in India. GIS, or Geographic Information Systems is a way to store and process data that can be easily presented in a graphical format. All the data-based maps and graphics like population densities or disease-spread maps you see even in popular mainstream publications are powered by GIS. They are easily understood by lay persons and can be easily created by appropriately equipped technical personnel.

College Station, the town where Texas A&M is located has an extremely proficient GIS department for community development purposes and they work closely with various university departments to develop data and maps for the region. The Spatial Sciences Lab in the Forest Sciences Department at Texas A&M is in fact one of the top facilities for such research in the country. I have taken three classes so far in this lab and will be taking another programming one next fall and have been quite impressed with the scope and limits to which GIS can be applied.

In this light, it was quite heartening to note that my hometown in India, Panvel was gearing up to implement GIS for managing the city records [credit to my mom for spotting the story online]. The last time I heard Panvel and GIS mentioned together was when I heard of the guy who supplies the computers for most of the town was offering GIS classes. Frankly, I was quite surprised to hear that then. I guess, he must have managed to impress upon the importance of GIS to the town council which is currently headed up by a young mayor, Prashant Thakur.

The town is planning to computerize all records searchable by any interested citizen and in due course, all this information will be put on the Internet as well. The Union government had put in place The Urban Infrastructure Development for Small and Medium Town (UIDSMT) program for computerizing all government records as part of large-scale administrative reforms. These reforms were largely inspired by Chandrababu Naidu’s efforts in Andhra Pradesh. According to PMC’s junior engineer SB Katekar, “The GIS will have information on aspects like total plot area, flat area, services, water supply pipe line design and its size, electrical poles, etc. Similarly, roads will have details like length and width and streetlights.” The GIS-implementing contractor will also be responsible for collecting missing data and the project is expected to go live within six months after the contract is awarded.

Personally, I am quite pleased to see the implementation of technology to handle bureaucratic and administrative tasks. Also, opening up the public records to the town’s denizens goes a long way in encouraging accountability and transparency in the administration. Large-scale reforms at the national level might not be possible in India due to coalition politics and mostly change shall be effected through such piecemeal changes at the local and state-level. This will hopefully lead to fruitful competition among jurisdictions and cause incremental administrative reform. Efficiency, simplicity, and ease of use are often the best justifications for paradigmatic change in bureaucracy.