An informed way of life

A Gujarat-based organisation is helping restore land and water resources

Picture this. While planning the construction of a check dam under the NREGA scheme, members of a village panchayat pull out a tablet and map their location offline. An app on the tablet shows them the geological features of the land, clearly pointing out the optimum site for construction. “Our app, CLART (Composite Land Restoration and Assessment Tool) uses existing open-source geological data to take the guesswork out of site planning,” says Jagdeesh Rao, chief executive of Foundation for Ecological Security, or FES. “Once implemented, CLART is likely to save the government time, energy and money in its soil and