The Hindu Business Line : `Law to revitalise Survey of India in Budget session'

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Hyderabad Jan. 24 A legislation to revitalise and re-engineer, one of the country's oldest institutions of international repute— The Survey of India (SOI), is expected to figure in the coming Budget session of Parliament.

The effort is to provide the institute, both the flexibility and freedom to deal with its core strengths of map making and surveys in the Indian and global contexts, especially in the changing market for the products.

Stating this, the Union Minister for Science & Technology, Mr Kapil Sibal, said the role for the private sector was enormous in generating & utilising map based data for national development. So far, data was collected and processed by the Survey of India. With the changes in the rules, it would soon be feasible for the private sector to participate.

Speaking at the ongoing four-day Map World Forum here, Mr Sibal said plans are to create a National Topographical Data Base (NTDB) on a 1:10,000 scale for rural areas and 1:2000 scale for about 800 cities and 200 major towns. Already, metros are being mapped on a 1:1000 scale.

Data conversion centre

He urged the various stakeholders in the geographical information systems (GIS) to come together to exploit the growing opportunities. Already more than 100 companies, mainly in Hyderabad, Bangalore and New Delhi are into it. The Indian market in 2006 was around $300 million. By 2012, it is expected to cross the $1-billion mark. Mr Sibal said he expected the Indian export of GIS segment to increase to $500 million in the next five years from the present $100 million.