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Showing posts from July, 2005

India: I Speak GIS

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Geography or GIS for that matter has never been so closer to our lives. Citizens and Planners of our country have never had so much insight into the lives of the people: Where they live, How they live and What they do? Thanks to GIS for having opened their eyes to this new era of Geospatial Democracy. “Maps speak subtle and surprising truth”. But surprisingly in a country like India, the world’s largest democracy, maps have always been confined to geographers and planners. The hoi polloi, who constitute the basic tenets of democracy, have always been silently and safely ignored in most of our planning processes and kept away from accessing the geospatial data. Among the greatest shortcomings of Indian democracy is the citizens being denied the information they need to make meaningful choices. With the enactment of Freedom of Information Act, 2002: An Act to provide for freedom to every citizen to secure access to information under the control of public authorities, consistent with publ