Foreword

Dr Debapriya Dutta

Scientist G Department of Science and Technology Government of India

India is spearheading a new wave of socioeconomic prosperity; one that is fueled by cutting-edge technology and innovation. Under the aegis of our Hon’ble Prime Minister, India is advancing towards an era of sustainable development right from the grassroots level, aimed at eradicating poverty, combating climate change, and improving business and living standards.

The country has well-established governance and institutional framework to realize this ambitious vision, supported by vibrant industrial and academic sectors. The synergy among these stakeholders is well facilitated by a sound technology ecosystem characterized by creating, collating, and disseminating indigenous data for building solutions.

Geospatial information, and its successful management, have emerged as a key tool for development in India, especially in understanding the economic, social, and environmental impacts of key government initiatives and their implementations on-ground. In this light, the role of the United Nations Initiative on Global Geospatial Information Management (UN-GGIM) and its Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) in setting the agenda for global geospatial information development has never been more relevant and foundational than it is today.

This report gives a brief glimpse of the kind of work, innovation, and benchmarks that Indian public and private sector organizations are establishing using Geospatial information, and how well they are aligned with various IGIF pathways at the experience level. The examples have been carefully curated to cover different contexts, geographies, communities, and visions holistically, and reflect the vast potential that Geospatial information has to offer, once it is liberalized, localized, and logicized.

The vision behind the report was to both present India’s successful institutional framework, with a vibrant private-sector network, academia, and civil society that produce and use geospatial data at scale, and examine the structures, procedures, and components that are driving improved Geospatial information management systems in the country for a strategic digital transformation. It is a compendium of experiences right from grassroots functionaries to the highest decision-making authorities on the road to Geospatial technology and data penetration, data sharing, capacity building, research, and development.

The report is to be viewed as a knowledge product that other nations, national and international organizations, and the larger community of Geospatial thinkers can use to comprehend, learn from, imbibe, and scale the Indian experience in aligning with the IGIF even though it is not an evaluation of the IGIF’s implementation in India. We present this document as a gift from India to the global geospatial community on the occasion of the 2nd United Nations World Geospatial Information Congress 2022 and hope that it communicates the accomplishments and participants of India’s geospatial ecosystem ably for the world to get inspired from.