The concern about the proposed law to introduce a stringent process for the use of geospatial data is not unwarranted. According to a draft of the Geospatial Information Regulation Bill circulated for feedback, all information that can be represented on geographical maps will have to be necessarily vetted by a special authority before being publicised. Of course, India has always been wary of sharing map-making powers. The anxiety, post-1947, draws as much from the nature of the country’s territorial disputes as from the security implications of a more laissez-faire map policy. Most of these anxieties are, of course, overblown. This is why two aspects of the new legislation need to be separated and carefully considered before rushing the final draft for Parliament’s approval: the possibility of harassment for possession of widely prevalent cartographic imagery at odds with the official boundary (think most foreign magazines), and the implications for a host of applications, commercial or in the public interest, that need real-time updates. Any company, organisation or individual that disseminates maps contradicting official versions could face up to seven years in prison and a fine of up to Rs. 100 crore. The proposed legislation envisages appellate authorities and enforcement agencies — a signal that issues of misrepresentation could be dealt with more strictly than they are currently.
The Survey of India’s two-dimensional, multi-coloured maps, of varying resolutions, have served to give us a static picture of the world around us. But geospatial maps, which the government wants to oversee, reflect how our neighbourhoods are mutating in real time. They allow us to capture the extent and nature of air pollutants around us, plot the unsustainable plundering of our groundwater, gauge the spread of a new flu outbreak to confirm if official estimates of, say, a malaria outbreak are understated, or that simply plot restaurant options in a neighbourhood. The provisions suggest that any modification to the maps or value addition also need to be cleared. The time lag the proposed process would impose, as well as the possibility of updates being rejected have worrying, disruptive implications. The draft Bill says that the government will vet geospatial information to preserve the “security, sovereignty and integrity” of the country — a broad objective that could be misused by the authorities to prevent any inconvenient information from being tracked, besides creating an avenue for rent-seeking. This is ironic considering that the Centre has a data-sharing policy in place since 2012 that exhorts departments to make their data on health statistics, forests, weather, and so on, more accessible to the public and in machine-readable formats. That the government says it is open to modifying the draft is reassuring. Much like telecom spectrum, geospatial imagery too is a resource that is only beginning to be valued. It would be better mined — to the profit of the public and the government — with a transparent policy that values information more than fines.
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