Drone mapping: One in six villages covered in India, shows data

In April 2020, the prime minister announced a new scheme to digitise and map land records. While the government was already deploying drones for crop insurance, the Survey of Villages Abadi and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas (SVAMITVA) was expected to map land data, create maps and digitise land parcels across the country’s 660,000 villages.

The government’s target is to complete the process by 2025. A Business Standard analysis, however, shows that the progress has been slow.

A new geospatial policy was approved last year, so the programme may pick up the pace. But for now, analysis from the SVAMITVA dashboard shows that till February 15, one in six villages in the country had been mapped using drones. The progress on other accounts was even slower.

One in nine villages had a complete map prepared, which was submitted to the state, and only one in 25 had a property card ready (see chart 1).

The government website, meanwhile, presents dual numbers. While the website shows that until February 15, in all 26,472 cards were prepared, it also shows that a greater number (27,133) of these cards was distributed. For our analysis, data on property cards prepared is used.

Further calculations show that only a few states account for most progress. The idea behind the government programme is to map all villages; some states are yet to come on board. Telangana, West Bengal and Bihar are among the ones that are yet to start the process of drone mapping. According to the government dashboard, Gujarat, Kerala, and Goa are among those that have only mapped a handful of villages and have not followed it up with feature extraction and handing over those maps to the states.

Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra account for nearly 80 per cent of the 108,444 villages where drone surveys have been conducted.

Maharashtra’s performance lags in other follow-up activities. Property cards were prepared in only 10 per cent of the villages that had completed mapping. In contrast, Haryana had prepared property cards for 43.8 per cent of the villages; Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh had covered 29.8 and 22 per cent, respectively.

Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Haryana accounted for 86 per cent of the villages where property cards are prepared (see chart 2).

Moreover, of the 28 states/UTs on board for the scheme, only four had completed drone surveys for over 50 per cent of their villages and just six had completed drone surveys for at least 40 per cent of their villages. 

Only three had prepared property cards for more than 10 per cent of their villages listed on the dashboard, with Haryana doing so for 37 per cent of its villages (see chart 3).

The government will need to carry out a drone survey of 138,000 villages and prepare 158,382 property cards each year if it is to achieve its goal of covering all of India’s villages by 2025.