 Prof. Arup Dasgupta Managing Editor (Honorary) [email protected] |
For the last few weeks we have been mulling over Geospatial Policy. We generally take policy as something to be followed diligently. We decry policies that seem to deny us something we need. We talk loftily of policy change. What is policy? Who decides it? Is it mandatory? Who can change it? Every social system has a policy – be it a household, a family, a cultural group, an institution, an industry or a nation – which sets down how we interact among ourselves such that our actions do not ultimately lead to irreversible social chaos. As social structures are not static, the first requirement of policy is the recognition that it has to be flexible and take into account methods, situations and the context in which it has to be formulated. Policies are the basis for laws and laws are general principles which are applied independent of context. We can disagree with a policy but we cannot break a law.
All nations respect the United Nations Principles of Remote Sensing but have different laws regulating the action of remote sensing. The UN Principles state that sensed countries have a right to ask for and get the data collected by the sensing country. The US law does not allow data of resolutions higher than half a metre to be disseminated in the civilian domain. Is this a reversal of an international policy by a national law? On the other hand an Israeli company provides better than one metre data to anybody who enters into a contract with them. Isn’t this more in keeping with the UN Principle? In India the Remote Sensing Data Policy dictates that all data of India of resolution better than one metre has to be disseminated to an Indian user after vetting by a High Resolution Data Committee. Therefore will I be breaking any law if I purchase such data of India abroad and bring it into India? The policy is silent on this!
Policies are expected to enable, to facilitate and to bring order in chaos. Policy makers need to vet each policy against this expectation. In many developing countries geospatial policies are framed with a colonial mindset that trust nobody and imagines and tries to protect the system from all sorts of imaginary catastrophes. In the process they deny the benefits of geospatial technology to the very people who can benefit from such technology and for whose ostensible benefit the technology has been developed. In today’s information enabled and driven world the way to be one step ahead is not by denial and control but by enablement, sharing and cooperation. If geospatial policy-makers understand this then we can look forward to enlightened policy regimes. If not then will industry be hobbled, academia be choked and governance suffer? Well, not really because work will be done by hook or by crook. Is this the situation we would like to have?
