Srishti – A GIS Framework for Grass Root Level Planning

G.P. Singh
Technical Director
National Informatics Centre, U.P. State Unit,
Introduction: Inter-regional disparities are one of the most critical issues among the
persisting problems in the development of State. Even after continuous effort by
Government, these problems could not be eradicated. In this context, the Planning
Department, U.P., has identified various socio-economic indicators of development that
can help us in finding the quantitative and qualitative changes at the village level.
Directorate of Economic and Statistics of Planning Department of U.P. is publishing
“Sankhyaki Patrika”, covering village level amenities and various Socio-Economic
indicators using digitization of data at district level, every year from 1995. These
indicators also help in comparison of disparities among the districts. Multiple tables and
graphs provide understanding of issues involved and accordingly indicate the priority
areas for reducing regional imbalance. These hundreds of table and graph based on
indicators are published once in a year and become basis of analysis to planners and
policy makers. Analytical reports are provided in the books that are based on some pre-
defined criteria. Main difficulty in this process is the contents rigidity in these books,
since once it is published cannot be changed and if analysis is required on new criteria
that can be done manually which is a time consuming process. All these hurdles could
be surmounted by a web based GIS (Geographical Information System) framework
built-up around the polygon village boundaries. Various data of different departments
can be linked with village boundaries, so that thematic maps can be generated for
viewing whole area at a glance for appropriate grass root planning. These maps will be
available on the fly based on criteria selected. This will help the planners and policy
makers for taking decisions timely by seeing facilities on the map up to village level.
Also, it is very easy to compare various facilities which are available in different villages
of the district on the same screen.
Development Approach: In the GIS application two kinds of data (spatial and non-
spatial) is used. Spatial data creation needs fair experience of conducting GPS based
ground survey, analysis of satellite imagery apart from expertise in the GIS tools and
technology. Most of the departments in the Government are not capable of doing such
kind of activities but collects non-spatial data from MIS (Management Information
System) in the form of reports and charts. Most of the planning is based on the reports
available with the departments which may not require exact location in terms of Latitude
and Longitude. Most important aspect in the development of web based GIS framework
was to make it easy for end-users. Anybody can use this framework without any prior
knowledge of GIS tools, which has following tremendous features:

1. Seamless maps generation of Districts from Block/Tehsil/Village level

2. Zoom in, zoom out, panning, etc. of the maps
3. Zoom in up to village boundary level
4. Map generation on the fly based on the parameter selection
5. Village search on the maps
6. Keeping Spatial Data in the Database (RDBMS)
7. Taking village boundary as the base for generating maps of any level (District,
Tehsil, Block, Village Panchayat, Division, etc.)
8. Provision of integration of the village layer with non-spatial data of various
schemes running in the village

The geographic area of a State is being divided into Districts, Tehsils, Blocks, and
Revenue & Panchayat Villages etc for various administrative/development reasons as
depicted in Figure below.
Districts 

Administrative Division Development Division

Tehsils  Block 

Revenue Village  Panchayat Village 
It is observed and analyzed that revenue village, from 2001 Census and from the village
boundary map of Survey of India, can be linked on Village code fixed in 2001 Census by
Registrar General of India. It is also observed that Revenue Village boundary is the
smallest polygon on the map and that is very rarely divided. Therefore merging village
boundaries, in one system, can create Block or Tehsil boundaries, while village and
block panchayat boundaries can be created in the same way in other system of
Panchayati Raj. Uniform and standard coding pattern for identification of District, Tehsil,
Block and Village has been taken from Census 2001. Scanning and digitization of all
villages of U.P. from the topo-sheets of the maps obtained from Survey of India and the
ground survey were major works consisting more than 1.07 lakhs villages and linking
those polygons with standard codes of district, tehsil and block. As above figure depicts
that boundaries are different in two divisions of administration and development of U.P.,
therefore it leads to different map requirements for planning and decision making.

Architecture and Design of the Framework: Web and RDBMS technologies have
been used in the designing and development of the GIS framework. The most important
aspect of the architecture of the framework is to give facility to link any kind of non-
spatial data up to village level. Design of the framework has been taken in such a way
that existing MIS application can be linked with GIS framework so that grass root level
planning and monitoring can be done effectively by seeing more and more area at a
glance. Web server, Database server and Map server has been used for hosting this
frame work. This framework has been hosted on http://gis.up.nic.in 
Available layers in the framework: Data of the following sectors from Census-2001
has been linked with village level maps for showing Population and Amenities in the
village..

a. Education
b. Health
c. Drinking Water
d. Post & Telecom
e. Communication
f. Banking
g. Recreation
h. Approach to Villages
i. Power Facility
j. Irrigation Facilities

Above sectors are further divided into multiple classifications, among which some are
describe as follows:

Education: It is further categorized into different number of Secondary, Senior

Secondary, Industrial, Adult Literacy and Primary Schools, Colleges and Other
Educational facilities in the villages.

Health: This sector is further divided into number of Unani Hospitals, Homeopathic
Hospitals, Allopathic Dispensaries, Ayurvadic Dispensaries, Unani Dispensaries,
Homeopathic, Dispensaries, Maternity Home, Family Welfare Centers, Child Welfare
Centers, Primary Health Sub Centers, Health Centers, Community Health Workers,
Other Medical Facilities, T. B. Clinic, Subsidized Medical Practitioners, Registered,
Medical Practitioners, Ayurvadic Hospitals, Allopathic Hospitals, Maternity & Child
Welfare Centers, Primary Health Centers Basic, Primary, Secondary and Higher
education facilities along with technical education, etc in the villages.

Similarly other sectors are also categorized into multiple classifications based on the
facility level which was surveyed in the Census 2001.
Apart from the above data of Census 2001, this framework is being used to link 41
grass root level facilities in the form of distances (in Km) from the Villages from year
2001 to 2008.These facilities are listed in the below table .These Every year Data has
been collected from concerned departments and published in the book called Sankyaki
Patrika (District level Statistical Book).

1. Agri. Service Center 22. Letter Box

2. Allopathic Hospitals 23. Mandi
3. Alternative Edu. Center 24. Market Haat
4. Animal Care Center 25. Mother Child Welfare Centre
5. Artificial Breed Center 26. Pesticides Store
6. Ayurvadic Hospitals 27. Post Office
7. Bus Stop 28. Post office Saving Bank
8. Cold Storage 29. Primary Schools
9. D Group Animal Hospital 30. Primay Agri. Loan Society
10. Development Office 31. Public Telephone
11. Drinking Water Source 32. Railway Halt
12. Fair Price Shop 33. Road
13. Family Welfare Center 34. Sale Purchase Society
14. Fertilizer Store 35. Second. Schools(Boys)
15. Government Dairy 36. Second. Schools(Girls)
16. Govt. Agr. & Vill. Dev. Bank 37. Seed Store
17. Govt. Comm. Bank 38. Telegraph Office
18. Govt. Purchase Center 39. Unani Hospitals
19. Higher Second. School(B) 40. Vetnary Hospitals
20. Higher Second. School(G) 41. VDO Center
21. Homeopathic Hospitals

Natural Resource Information System (NRIS): Spatial data prepared under NRIS has
been linked with this framework, which has following layers:
¾ Rail Track
¾ Road
 ¾ Canal
¾ Forest
¾ Structural Lineament
¾ Drainage Line
¾ Drainage Polygon
¾ Land Category
o Ground Water
o Lithological
o Land Use/Land Cover
o Watershed
o Geomorphological
o Soil
o Settlement Area

Advantage of GIS Framework: This framework gives you tremendous ability in terms
of data relevancy which can further leads to much more ease in planning and decision
making:
™ Administration and development get easier for decision-making authorities when
smaller areas need to be handled such as village polygon. Thematic indicators
like Census parameters, economic indicators can add value and support
decision-making process.
™ As one can observed that accessing developments, growth and other factors,
without the main geographic component, perception of the data may be difficult.
Whereas thematic maps based on criteria of any socio-economic data can give
better understanding.
™ Developmental activities over period of time can be observed on thematic maps
easily.
™ Comparative depiction of a theme at various administrative units at a specified
level brings forth a healthy competition; facilitate infrastructure planning and other
such positive reforms.
™ Data from various disciplines can be integrated seamlessly and cross linked to
help monitor the growth of the regions in various sectors.
 ™ Overlaying of different layers such as road facility in the form distance and road
network can give better way of planning and sanctioning of road scheme in the
area.
™ Since performance can be analyzed at various levels on the same parameter it
helps to identify the failure or the negative impacts of any system/parameter, too.

Conclusion: GIS is not a newfangled technology in the field of spatial data analysis and
planning. Many departments are already using this technology for generating geo-
referenced data with the help of costly and cumbersome tools. Development of GIS
application is treated as a very specialized activity, which needs prior training and
expertise. Due to limited resources in the departments, potential of GIS has not been
explored yet, though it can help in better planning and decision making in the
government departments. It is also observed that many times, lot of money, time and
effort is put by various departments for generating similar kind of spatial data, while this
could be avoided by putting the data at a common place. There is a need of some
process or method for updating such kind of spatial data by various departments and
some mechanism for sharing of data so that latest maps can be timely obtained for
decision making.

‘Srishti’ a GIS framework fulfills all above requirements and helping in the integration of
spatial and non-spatial data for various departments. During the development of this
framework it was observed in the analysis that spatial data was being generated in a
different projection coordinate system and geographic coordinate system. This leads to
the problem of overlaying of different maps on each other when a location is analyzed.
Therefore, it is requisite that uniform policy of geo-referencing should be used in the
digitization of the maps so that multiple spatial data can be integrated and multiple
layers can be overlaid in the analysis of locations. It is significant to note that most of
the departments in the government have multiple MIS reports which consist of
non-spatial data. This non-spatial data can be linked with different layers (district,
tehsil, block or village) available in the framework and thematic maps can be
generated for analysis and decision making.
Therefore, prior knowledge of GIS, procurement of GIS software and application
development will not be required by most of the departments initially, since
precision of the location is not important in most of the cases.