NEW DELHI: In a path-breaking move, the Centre on Monday announced sweeping changes to India’s mapping policy as it liberalised regulations that apply to acquisition and production of geospatial (topography) data and services, including surveying and mapping, enabling private companies to work without prior approvals.
While announcing new geospatial data guidelines, science and technology minister Harsh Vardhan said, “Because of the non-availability of high-quality maps, several hundred billion positive sectors like farming, mining, urban construction, transportation and delivery, services for e-commerce and communication like 5G have been suffering.” He said that due to restrictions, even the Survey of India had to take a series of permissions for its own work and its projects would get stuck for months. The new guidelines will help the “government realise its vision of Aatmanirbhar Bharat and the goal of a $5 trillion economy,” he said.
Firms can now acquire, collect, generate, disseminate, store, share, distribute and create geospatial data, including maps within the Indian territory, including underwater by using geospatial technologies.
Besides “unlocking tremendous opportunities for startups. private sector and research institutions to drive innovations and build scalable solutions”, PM Narendra Modi said, in a series of tweets, that “India’s farmers will also be benefitted by leveraging the potential of geospatial and remote sensing data. Democratising data will enable the rise of new technologies and platforms that will drive efficiencies in agriculture and allied sectors.”
Calling it the “opening of a new chapter”, Union minister of state for space Jitendra Singh said, “Map-making in India stands completely deregulated with effect from today and it is in keeping with PM Modi’s agenda of self-reliance. I will invite all stakeholders, companies and business houses to make the most of this opportunity.”
Spelling out the new provisions, science and technology department secretary Ashutosh Sharma said the “new guidelines will stimulate and empower Indian industry and surveying agencies without diluting security concerns, will facilitate ease of acquiring and use of data, and will take the system away from the regime of approvals to self-certifications.”
On safety and regulations, the secretary said, “What is readily available globally should not be regulated. For Indian entities, complete deregulation will be there with no prior approvals, security clearances, licences for acquisition and production of geospatial data and services, including maps. High spatial accuracy geospatial data finer than 1 m horizontally and 3 m vertically will be acquired and owned only by Indian entities and stored in India. The norms will provide a level-playing field to the Indian private sector.”
Isro chairman K Sivan, who was also part of the discussions that led to the move, said that coupled with the remote sensing policy, the Indian private sector will be able to become more vibrant and enable India to innovate better.
The private sector is jubilant with new guidelines. Rakesh Verma, the CMD of MapmyIndia, which had recently signed an MoU with Isro for providing satellite-based map services, told TOI “all these old policies were unrealistic and deterrent to the growth of the country. Like to disseminate information about a pothole on a road through our navigation system to make people aware about it, we had to take a series of approvals that would take several months. Google Maps did not have to take such permissions but Indian companies had to. But now, the self-approval process will expedite such processes.”
Awais Ahmed, founder and CEO, Pixxel, said, “This takes away the entire time and effort it took to gain access earlier. Companies can procure and sell the data as long as it is above threshold value (1m & 3m), which will enable us to do analysis much faster without hindrance. This will be more use cases as more companies come up, which will benefit the people ultimately,”
DST said that emerging vibrant technologies like Digital India, Smart Cities, eCommerce, autonomous drones, delivery, logistics and urban transport require a leap forward in mapping with greater depth, resolution and precision. “We look forward to India emerging as a mapping power, creating next generation indigenous maps and taking new technologies to the world,” it added.