NIC being the IT backbone of Government of India for long, how would you describe the centre's growth and evolution over the years?
IT in India has come a long way since early eighties when a humble step was taken to initiate Information Technology uses amongst government users by setting up the organization called NIC under Dept. of Electronics. Thereafter it moved to Planning Commission and today there is a separate Ministry for I.T. and NIC has grown by leaps to capture the imagination of the nation. NIC today has presence in almost every district of India. In north-east NIC has reached the blocks in the form of Community Information Centre (CIC). The NIC has become the IT wheel for the government. The NIC could envision the immense potential of spatial data and hence formed separate divisions for GIS, Remote Sensing and processing of aerial photographs in early nineties. The NIC is one of the few organizations in the country which embarked upon developing indigenous software for the products that include GISNIC, IPSNIC, Mapview, GeoNIC, Collab-CAD etc. These software are implemented up to the district level in the country with necessary training and data sharing.

GIS and RS Division of the NIC gives support to various central/state ministries and departments by conceiving and implementing GIS application projects tailor made to their needs. The division is also involved in an ambitious programme of national spatial database development. I would like to add that NIC being in government sector, its true role in IT revolution in India was never given its due or rather government sector was never a good marketer. Whatever !

How much is FSI accustomed to the use of these latest techniques?
FSI is using state of the art techniques in assessment of forest cover. The latest assessment (2001) of forest cover was based on digital processing of satellite data (IRS 1C/1D; LISS III) where mapping was possible at 1:50,000 scale. The smallest tree canopy that could be mapped was as small as 1 ha. Earlier assessments were largely based on visual interpretation of FCC's at 1:250,000 scale where the cartographic limit was 25 ha. In FSI, procurement of most modern and powerful workstations and upgradation of older hardware is made on a regular basis and latest versions of DIP software is used. Training of technical staff in 'National Forest Data Management Centre' is carried out on a regular basis for their skill enhancement.

What role do you visualise of the private sector in the activities of FSI?
With availability of digital data on forest cover, there are immense opportunities for value addition. The State Forest Departments, Research Institutions, Universities, etc. who constitute the main users of digital forest cover data in the public sector, can engage specialist firms in the private sector to answer technical problems under mutually rewarding agreements. The cooperation can be in the fields of GIS applications, map printing, training, etc. Even after these public sector organisations build their own capacities to handle digital data, there is a large scope for public-private partnership in this domain.

How do you foresee the future of geospatial market in India?
If we see the development curve of GIS in India, we realize that India still is at the lower end of the curve. We have not generated the digital spatial databases, which we need for developing the high-end applications. Contrary to the prevailing situation in some of the developed countries where one can simply get the digitized data off-the-shelf and start analyzing the same to develop high-end applications, in India one has to first create the spatial datasets. This consumes upto 80 % of the project time.

But from the other perspective, this means a big market does exist for both government and private players. The success of BHOOMI has shown that dreams are nearer than we thought.GIS is now being used for G2G and G2C services.

I am very upbeat about the future. GIS is being used not only by conventional users, but also by people like marketers etc. Eventually demand will drive this industry. And there is no denying the fact that there is a huge demand for GIS data and services. GIS is now slowly but steadily making in-roads into "mainstream". In my opinion in the past GIS was used more by technocrats who understood technology, but in the future GIS shall be used by non-technocrat decision makers. I think that will be the time, when GIS shall be said to have truly arrived.

The government initiative in the form of NSDI and some private players also joining the party, the scene could change very fast. We can go only one way from here. That's forward.

Any recent initiative of NIC in the field of GIS you would like to mention?
Realizing the dynamics of change, NIC has moved on from developing standalone systems to providing web based GIS solutions in the domain of G2G and G2C services. GPS data along with high-resolution data from IKONOS, IRS are being used extensively for providing solutions to the end users. The NIC has also implemented a Central GIS server over the Storage Area Network (SAN). NIC has also increased the scope of the national spatial database development program to include meta data development and associated services such as Meta data servers. To process voluminous satellite data, the NIC has installed PARAM Padma supercomputing technology in GIS Lab. The NIC has ambitious plans for linking e-governance programs to GIS based g-governance programmes.

What are the key issues for the growth of Indian geomatics?
In my opinion the key issues that need attention are:

• government-private partnership
• formulation of conducive maps acquisition/dissemination policies as far as data security concerns are there
• early fruits by NSDI
• Trained pool of manpower in GIS
• GIS curriculum in schools /colleges