India's geospatial ecosystem: Bhuvan, policies and governance uses

Detail

1. Bhuvan: India's own geoportal

• Geoportal means a website where people can see, search and download maps and satellite data.
• Bhuvan was launched in 2009 by NRSC (National Remote Sensing Centre, Hyderabad, part of ISRO).
• It shows Indian satellite imagery, such as images from the IRS series that began with IRS-1A (1988).
• It also gives thematic maps (maps on one theme, such as land use, wasteland or floods) and online services.

• NCERT web links for remote sensing and spatial information technology direct students to Bhuvan and to IIRS (Indian Institute of Remote Sensing, Dehradun).

• How it fits the timeline:

• Aerial photography came first: cameras on aircraft.
• Then Landsat (USA, 1972) started civilian satellite remote sensing.
• Then IRS-1A (1988) gave India its own imaging satellites.
• Today Bhuvan gives people access to these images. NavIC (India's regional navigation satellite system) gives the position data.

2. Geotagging: checking work on the ground

• Geotagging means attaching GPS coordinates (latitude and longitude) and a photograph to a physical asset, such as a pond, a house or a road.
• A field worker photographs the asset with a mobile app.
• The app records the exact location and the time.
• The geotag then appears on Bhuvan over a satellite image.

• Officials and citizens can check that the asset really exists at that spot. This makes "ghost" assets (work that exists only on paper) harder to hide.

• Where it is used:

• MGNREGA assets, geotagged since 2016.
• PMAY-G (Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana–Gramin) houses, photographed at each stage of building.
• Amrit Sarovars (ponds built or revived in each district).

3. National Spatial Data Infrastructure (NSDI, 2006)

• NSDI is a national framework of shared standards, plus a national geoportal for sharing spatial data between agencies.
• The problem it solved:
• Many departments were mapping the same area separately.
• Their maps used different formats and scales, so they could not be combined.
• NSDI's shared standards make the data interoperable (different systems can read and combine it). This cuts duplicated mapping.

4. Policy shift: from control to liberalisation

Policy / scheme	Date	Ministry / agency	Core change
SVAMITVA	24 April 2020	Panchayati Raj + Survey of India	Drone mapping of inhabited village land; property cards
Geospatial Guidelines	15 February 2021	DST	No prior approval for Indian entities, except for a negative list
Drone Rules	August 2021	Civil Aviation	Fewer forms and fees; green, yellow and red zones on Digital Sky
National Geospatial Policy	28 December 2022	DST (Science and Technology)	Committee for the sector; targets for 2025, 2030 and 2035

4a. Guidelines for Acquiring and Producing Geospatial Data (15 February 2021)

• Geospatial data is any data linked to a location on Earth: maps, satellite images, survey points.
• What changed:
• Before: collecting, making or publishing maps often needed prior approval from the government.
• After: Indian entities no longer need this approval to collect, produce or publish maps and data.
• Exception: a negative list of sensitive attributes, such as defence sites, still stays restricted.

• The finest-resolution data (most detailed) is kept for Indian entities. Foreign firms get only coarser data.

• Why: to help Indian start-ups and companies, and to reduce dependence on foreign map providers.

4b. Drone Rules 2021 (August 2021)

• They cut the number of forms and fees needed to own and fly a drone.
• Airspace zones are shown on the Digital Sky platform (an online map for drone permissions):
• Green zone: flying allowed without permission, within set height limits.
• Yellow zone: controlled airspace; permission is needed.

• Red zone: no-fly zone, flying only with special central approval. Examples are areas near borders and sensitive sites.

• Cheaper and easier drone use made drone surveys like SVAMITVA possible on a large scale.

4c. SVAMITVA scheme (24 April 2020)

• Full name: Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas [3].
• Launch: by the Prime Minister on 24 April 2020, National Panchayati Raj Day [3].
• Implementation:
• Ministry of Panchayati Raj.
• Survey of India does the mapping.

• NICSI (National Informatics Centre Services Inc.) is the technology partner [3].

• Why it was needed:

• Abadi land (the inhabited part of a village) was often never surveyed.
• People could not prove they owned their homes.

• So they could not get bank loans, and land disputes were common [3].

• How it works:

• CORS (Continuously Operating Reference Stations: fixed GNSS stations that give very accurate positions) set up ground control points. These points tie each map exactly to real locations [3].
• Drones fly over the abadi area and produce high-resolution maps [3].
• Owners receive property cards (legal record-of-rights).
• Result: the property can be used as security for bank loans, disputes fall, and Gram Panchayats can assess property tax [3].

• The maps also feed Gram Manchitra, a spatial planning app for the Gram Panchayat Development Plan (GPDP) [3].

• Coverage and cost:

• Drone surveys: completed in 3.20 lakh villages, covering 68,122 sq km (as of 2 April 2025) [3].
• Property cards: 2.42 crore cards for 1.61 lakh villages (as of 11 March 2025) [3].
• MoUs: signed by 31 States/UTs (as of 11 March 2025) [3].
• Full drone coverage: UTs of Lakshadweep, Ladakh, Delhi; states of Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Chhattisgarh [3].
• 18 January 2025: 65 lakh cards were distributed in more than 50,000 villages across 10 states and 2 UTs (J&K, Ladakh) [3].
• Outlay: ₹566.23 crore for FY 2020-21 to 2024-25, extended to FY 2025-26 [3].

4d. National Geospatial Policy 2022 (NGP 2022)

• Notified: 28 December 2022 by the Ministry of Science and Technology [2]. Its vision runs to 2035 [2].
• Institution: it sets up a Geospatial Data Promotion and Development Committee (GDPDC), the top body that makes strategy and guidelines for the sector. DST (Department of Science and Technology) leads the policy's work [2].
• Core idea: geospatial data made with public funds, including Survey of India data, is treated as a public good and is open to everyone [2].

Target year	Goals [2]
2025	Legal framework for liberalisation; a unified digital interface for public geospatial data; a redefined National Geodetic Framework; a high-accuracy geoid model (the shape of Earth's mean sea-level surface, used to measure true heights)
2030	High-resolution topographic survey: 5–10 cm for urban and rural areas, 50–100 cm for forests and wastelands. National DEM: 25 cm accuracy in plains, 1–3 m in hilly areas. A Geospatial Knowledge Infrastructure
2035	Bathymetric (water-depth) data for inland waters and the deep sea, for the Blue Economy; mapping of underground infrastructure in major cities; National Digital Twin of major cities

• DEM (Digital Elevation Model): a digital grid that stores the height of the land at every point. It is used for flood modelling, roads and watershed planning.
• Digital twin: a detailed 3-D digital copy of a real city. Planners can test changes on it before building in the real city.
• Follow-up steps:
• Operation Dronagiri was launched on 13 November 2024 as a pilot under NGP 2022 [2].
  • It runs in Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra [2].
  • It uses an Integrated Geospatial Data Sharing Interface (GDI) [2].
• Survey of India has built a pan-India CORS network [2].
• The Union Budget 2025-26 gave ₹100 crore for a National Geospatial Mission [2].
• A National Geospatial Data Repository is being built as one central data platform [2].
• NGP 2022 follows the UN-GGIM's Integrated Geospatial Information Framework (IGIF) [2].

5. Governance uses

5a. Agriculture: FASAL

• FASAL (Forecasting Agricultural output using Space, Agro-meteorology and Land-based observations) gives pre-harvest crop forecasts.
• Satellites, including microwave sensors that can see through cloud, map the area under each crop.
• Weather data and field data are added to estimate the yield.

• Result: production estimates arrive before harvest. This helps procurement, exports and import planning.

• Who runs it: the Mahalanobis National Crop Forecast Centre (MNCFC), New Delhi.

5b. Disasters: NRSC

• NRSC makes drought and flood maps and runs the National Database for Emergency Management (NDEM), a GIS database used during disasters.
• Joshimath (Chamoli, Uttarakhand), January 2023:
• The town was sinking: land was subsiding and cracks were opening in houses.

• NRSC released satellite images that showed how fast the ground was sinking.

• NRSC also makes landslide maps after disasters. For hazard processes, see natural-hazards-disasters.

5c. Land resources

• Wasteland atlases and land-use/land-cover atlases, made from repeated satellite images, track changes over time.
• Examples of change they show: degraded land, farmland turning into towns, and loss of forest.

5d. Infrastructure: PM Gati Shakti

• PM Gati Shakti National Master Plan, launched October 2021.
• It is a GIS platform built by BISAG-N (Bhaskaracharya National Institute for Space Applications and Geo-informatics).
• How it works:
• It brings together the infrastructure plans of 16 key ministries, including Railways and Road Transport [2].
• All project layers sit on one map.

• Result: fewer clashes (for example, a road dug up again later for a pipeline), better multimodal connectivity (rail, road, port and air links joined up), and lower logistics cost.

• From Budget 2025-26, its data and maps are to be opened to the private sector for PPP project planning [2].

• Link to NGP 2022: accurate geospatial data from NGP 2022 is meant to make Gati Shakti planning easier and avoid duplicated work [2].

Prelims Hooks

• Bhuvan was launched in 2009 by NRSC, Hyderabad (ISRO). It is not a Survey of India or BISAG-N portal.
• MGNREGA asset geotagging on Bhuvan began in 2016. PMAY-G houses and Amrit Sarovars are also geotagged.
• Order in time: NSDI (2006) → Bhuvan (2009) → SVAMITVA (April 2020) → Geospatial Guidelines (February 2021) → Drone Rules (August 2021) → Gati Shakti (October 2021) → NGP (December 2022).
• SVAMITVA was launched on 24 April 2020, National Panchayati Raj Day. The Ministry of Panchayati Raj runs it and Survey of India maps the land. It gives property cards for abadi (inhabited) land, not for farmland [3].
• NGP 2022 targets: national DEM and high-resolution topographic mapping by 2030; digital twins of major cities by 2035; geoid model by 2025 [2].
• Drone Rules 2021: green, yellow and red zones shown on the Digital Sky platform. Red means a no-fly zone.
• FASAL forecasts come from MNCFC, New Delhi. They are not made by IMD.
• PM Gati Shakti GIS platform was built by BISAG-N. It is not run by ISRO.
• Trap: the 2021 Guidelines removed prior approval only for Indian entities. The finest-resolution data stays reserved for them, and the negative list stays restricted.
• Operation Dronagiri (13 November 2024) is an NGP 2022 pilot in 5 states: UP, Haryana, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra [2].

Mains Points

• From control to openness (GS-III, infrastructure and technology):
• The 2021 Guidelines, Drone Rules 2021 and NGP 2022 moved India from approval-based map control to open data treated as a public good [2].
• This helps start-ups and Atmanirbhar mapping.

• It also protects data sovereignty (India's control over its own data) by reserving the finest data for Indian entities.

• Transparency in welfare:

• Geotagging on Bhuvan (MGNREGA, PMAY-G, Amrit Sarovar) and SVAMITVA property cards cut leakages and land disputes.

• They also open up rural credit. By March 2025, 2.42 crore cards had been issued [3].

• Disaster and food security:

• NRSC flood and drought maps, NDEM, and the Joshimath subsidence imagery (January 2023) support early warning and rebuilding.

• FASAL's pre-harvest forecasts guide procurement and trade decisions.

• Concerns:

• Privacy: high-resolution and drone images can show private homes.
• Data sovereignty: there is a pull between open data and national security.
• Weak capacity in states and panchayats: many lack trained staff to use GIS.
• Accuracy of property cards and how fast they are legally accepted vary from state to state.