The area where one does not see much progress is town-surveys. The present methodology of town-surveys is so slow that a young surveyor starts the surveys but is not able to come out of the surveys till he tires or retires. It is like Abhimanyu entering the Chakraviyuh - can enter but will not
come out!
Observations and Suggestions
The problems of the existing system of land records and cadastral surveys have been lucidly enunciated by the following papers in April issue of GIS Development:
Designing a National LIS - Nori, Chardrasekhar
Computerisation of Land Records - Rai Kuldip and Bhalla, D.K. of Ministry of Rural Development
Land Records Computerization - Rao, T. Raja Shekhar, P. Raj
Geomancy of Village Development - The GIS Way - Ahuja, Brig J.S.
A thorough reading of the papers and the long association of the author with the cadastral survey systems of India specially Madhya Pradesh gives rise to the following observations:
- Management of change; Technological and Social
In case the realistic solutions have to be found, the approach has to be in the realm of 'management of change'. The basics of the body of knowledge of management of change - which is quite vast now should embrace the following guiding points. The change should be:
Right, technically/professionally
Acceptable, socially
Feasible, economically
Most of the time, specially professional persons plead for the technology without taking its social impact and expenditure. The experience of the Computerization of Land Records support this view.
The 'betterness' of change is always to be proven, so to say. This proof should come in the form of the productivity i.e. less cost, more accuracy, more reliable etc.
- First, go for More Reliable Data Base
Madhya Pradesh switched to the rectified photo prints in 1981. The productivity increased many times. Specifically, time taken to produce the graphical document was reduced to less than half, cost was reduced to one third. The photo of the land was the most accurate witness to the land on
the day of the photography. The acceptability of the technology was instant, because the traditional process of generating land - records was not disturbed. There was no fear of losing jobs
Digital Orthophoto The present day technology of orthophotomapping can be resorted to even in
undulating terrain where 'rectification' 'process' does not give accurate result. The digital orthophophoto mapping will also give digitized data base in addition to the photo-record.
Technically, the process of digital photo-mapping will be a simpler process in comparison to the photogrammetry. This task can be outsourced to a large number of firms which have generated capability for this technique. Even otherwise, the technique can be easily transferred to the States.
Fiscal Records should continue to be generated by the staff of the Land Records Dept. The present system of computerisation of the records can then continue in a smoother way.
Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates for village trijunctions
Village trijunctions are permanent marks on the ground most of which are likely to be intact. Differential GPS coordinates in terms of World Geodetic System (WGS) can be provided to the available Trijunctions. These coordinates and GPS stations will prove useful for precision aerial photography and to control digital orthophoto-mapping operations.
At one time Survey of India topograhical maps used to show all trijunctions on the map. This practice was stopped in fifties. It is recommended that trijunctions should be shown on 1:25000 maps of Survey of India.
Without going into more details of the papers, the following suggestions are made for the benefit of Cadastral Surveys in India.