As the dust begins to settle on Prime Minister Narendra Modi government's first Budget, we, as a geospatial community, wanted to know, what were the implications on the geospatial community. The wider reception from the industry was largely positive with big ticket infrastructure, housing and power project see as very progressive. Geospatial technologies and IT can find application and relevance across a large number of allocations in Infrastructure, Smart Governance and other national level projects in varying degrees.
Many see the Budget as a tone-setter for the medium-term reform process that the new government is committed to. "It has specific focus on programmes that support geospatial industry growth," says Kaushik Chakraborty, Vice President, Hexagon India. In short, the geospatial industry has been given an opportunity to become an integral part of the next phase of economic expansion for India.
"The budget holds good prospects for the geospatial industry especially in the sectors of Road Development, Urban Development, Ports & Defence, River Interlinking and Jal Marg Vikas (NW-1) Project besides other major initiatives," says Rajesh Alla, Chairman & Managing Director, IIC Technologies.
“Also emphasis on start-ups, innovation, incubators, etc. will certainly bring momentum to job creation," feels B.V.R Mohan Reddy, Founder & Executive Chairman, Cyient.
On the other hand, Amit Somani, Joint Managing Director, ADCC Infocad, points out the budget is more policy-driven than focused on specific issues. Interestingly, while the budget sought to earmark a small corpus for many new initiatives, hopefully, the same gets allocated later on.
Thrust on Infrastructure
The Budget specifically gives a push to infrastructure, including smart cities, smart transportation (bullet trains etc), national highway projects, power infrastructure in rural areas, Internet & IT Infrastructure, National Rural Broadband etc. All these mega projects will go out to boost business in survey, imagery, data processing, products/platforms and applications and business intelligence for planning, project monitoring and operations.
GIS combined with visualisation techniques can be used as a media to create the public awareness and to get consensus among the states, feels Alla. With these opportunities in ports, airports, roads and infra projects, “GIS technology would play an important role right from designing implementation and monitoring in terms of creating Geospatial services, and Geospatial software solution implementations might also lead up to BIM,” adds Somani.
Initiatives like development of new airports through PPP model will provide a massive boost to the overall economy of the country in terms of infrastructure. “These announcements send out a strong message about the seriousness of this government in pushing for better connectivity and superior facilities for better public life,” believes Sunil MK, Head-Architecture, Engineering & Construction, Autodesk India and SAARC.
GIS-based decision support systems will also definitely enhance the process of interlinking of rivers. Contours mapping is critical for river connectivity. Without geospatial technology deployment, this initiative can’t be done. Geospatial technology will, therefore, be very important for connecting rivers in India, thinks Reddy.
Some of the other core elements of the Budget relevant to the geospatial domain include the following:
- Master planning of three new smart cities proposed in the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor region, v.i.z., Ponneri in Tamil Nadu, Krishnapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Tumkur in Karnataka to be completed.
- Development of industrial corridors proposed with increased emphasis on smart cities linked to transport connectivity to spur growth in manufacturing and urbanization.
- Expeditious completion of Amritsar-Kolkata Industrial master planning proposed.
- Target of NH construction of 8500 km to be achieved in current financial year.
- New outlay of $1933.01 million* proposed toward road connectivity and existing outlay for National and State Highways enhanced to $6298.95 million.
- New outlay of $83.31 million proposed for NHAI for Industrial Corridor Study.
- New outlay of $163.63 million proposed for Rail Development in North-East.
- New outlay of $699.88 million proposed for Jal Marg Vikas on Ganga River.
- New outlay of $16.66 million proposed for Detailed Project Reports for linking of the rivers of India.
- New outlay of $33.32 million proposed for Delhi Power Reforms and of Rs. 500 crores proposed for Delhi Water Reforms.
- New outlay of $16.66 million proposed for Metro Projects in Lucknow and Ahmedabad.
- New Outlay of $16.66 million proposed for Smart Governance.
- New Outlay of $499.91 million proposed for Police Reforms.
- Scheme for development of new airports in Tier I and Tier II Cities to be launched.
- 500 urban habitations to be provided support for renewal of infrastructure and services in next 10 years through PPPs.
- Several major space missions planned for 2014-15.
(*USD-INR Exchange rate 60.01)
Smart Cities
The Budget gives due importance to the concept of 'smart cities' that seeks to handle large-scale urbanisation. The Finance Minister announced a sum of $1176.47 million towards developing 100 smart cities. "We are excited with the huge market potential that will be opening up for builders, engineers, architects and companies like ours, who work closely with the building and infrastructure industry in India, says Sunil MK, hails this announcement is a bold and encouraging step by the government.
However, few sections of the geospatial community might also like to ask if the current allocation is adequate for such an ambitious undertaking.
To give a little context here, the Ministry for Urban Development (MoUD) under the UPA government decided to do a Feasibility Study for Development of Smart Cities in India and invited eligible consultancy firms for expression of interest to provide their services on 5th February 2014.
However, after the swearing-in of the new government, the MoUD held a meeting at Nirman Bhawan, New Delhi on June 6, 2014, where Secretary (UD) instructed the National Institute of Urban Affairs to develop a team of professionals for working on smart city project and sustainable development. Barjor E Mehta, Lead Urban Specialist, The World Bank Development Group, was invited to give a presentation on ‘Opportunities from India's Spatial Transformation’. Quite interestingly, he restructured the concept of 'making 100 new cities to 'making 100 cities new’. Incidentally, in the same meeting the Joint Secretary (UD & MD) shared that MoUD is designing the concept of level-wise development of smarter cities — measurable indicators are being developed for Level-1 and Level-2 of smart cities.
The Finance minister, by making an exclusive allocation in the Budget for the smart city project, appears to lend a sense of direction and legitimacy to a popular concept that was craving implementation energy.
(*USD-INR Exchange rate 60.01)
Snippets from the Rail Budget
The Railway Budget preceding the Union Budget announcements also featured some announcements having a scope for adoption of geospatial technologies.
- Railway's vast land assets need to be digitised and mapped using GIS for better management and usage.
- Outlay of $166.63 million proposed towards Rail Development in North-East.
- Outlay of $166.63 million proposed for infrastructure development for the Bullet train projects.
Efforts have already been undertaken since many years to bring all the assets of Indian railways on a GIS map. The Rail Minister reference to digitization and GIS mapping of land assets of railways reinforces the new government's resolve to continue this critical work.
(*USD-INR Exchange rate 60.01)
Summing up
The Association of Geospatial Industries (AGI) hailed the new Budget as forward-looking and affirmative to an extent in terms of giving due emphasis to the geospatial industry. As per AGI statement issued by Executive Director Bharti Sinha, the key project areas will be road connectivity, urban housing, metro for Lucknow and Ahmedabad, digital connectivity for 500 Habitations, Ganga river cleaning, amongst many others.
Other key projects like National GIS and the 1:10k mapping project will start soon to provide an information backbone to other projects and programmes of the government, ads Chakraborty. Now it needs to be seen how the geospatial industry and solution providers can tap the various opportunities unleashed by the government and gain a strong foothold in nation-building, decision-making and governance.
Despite the extensive usage of GIS as a technology, the true potential of GIS is still to be fully realised for decision support by the stakeholders, planners, decision makers, and others. Few initiatives have definitely been successful and have confirmed the potential of GIS for project-work, but in many areas, GIS is yet to turn into a key element of the process of planning, nation building and governance.
