India’s EO Pyramid for Holistic Development

Abstract

The Indian Earth Observations (EO) Programme, encompassing the space, ground and the applications segment, has practically demonstrated various roles that EO could play in catalyzing the developmental process of a nation at various levels. The present in-orbit Indian EO constellation of operational satellites and the planned missions have been a part of India’s EO strategy to have specific thematic missions to meet the land & water resources management, cartography applications, and oceanography & atmospheric science and management requirements besides meeting the needs of the disaster management support programme. A unique institutional framework, namely the National Natural Resources Management System (NNRMS) under the aegis of Planning Commission, Government of India steers the whole EO programme in India. While such a strategy is primarily public goods services oriented, it also creates enough space for a closer cooperation with industry and academia to form a formidable EO triad. The country has demonstrated innovatively how to put to use the EO for addressing the most fundamental national priorities such as food security & poverty alleviation, creation of natural assets and also in building the physical and social infrastructure, providing inputs for weather and climate science as well as in tackling natural disasters in all phases. While addressing such goals, the convergence of EO with geospatial technologies enabled creation of comprehensive spatial data infrastructure as national repository to help identifying environmentally degraded wastelands and reclaiming the culturable wastelands; identifying sources of drinking water especially in hard rock terrain and suitable sites for ground water recharge; taking up watershed development in a holistic manner linking the livelihood of the populace with soil and water conservation; irrigated command area management addressing various issues including salinity and alkalinity; dissemination of agricultural crop acreage and yield estimates; bio-diversity characterization at landscape level; and disaster management such as flood mapping and agricultural drought assessment.

India has successfully demonstrated many such innovative applications, taking the EO based services to ‘the last’ in the social hierarchy, essentially the poor and marginalized. In the recent times, India has envisaged setting up Village Resource Centres in the backward and inaccessible rural areas of the country. In this process, Indian EO programme has aligned itself well with various activities under the Bharat Nirman programme such as National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme; Accelerated Irrigation Benefit Programme (AIBP); National Urban Renewal Mission (NURM); National Watershed Development Programme for Rainfed Areas (NWDPRA).