MoU singed between Rural Development Ministry & ISRO for geo-tagging assets 

A Memorandum of Understanding was signed here between the Rural Development Ministry and ISRO, Department of Space for geo-tagging the assets created under MGNREGA in each gram panchayat. The move comes after the Prime Minister during a review meeting recently had underlined for online recording and monitoring of assets to check leakages and for effective mapping of terrain for future developmental works. Around 30 lakh assets are created annually across the country under the rural job scheme and the Ministry has decided that through convergence with other schemes, the geo-tagging of such assets will be done on a mission mode.

Speaking on the occasion, Secretary, Rural Development, Shri J.S.Mathur said that through Bhuvan Mobile Platform, completed asset will be Geo-tagged along with photograph by Gram Rozgar Sahayak or Junior engineer. He said as the huge amount of funds are now flowing through the 14th Finance Commission to Gram Panchayats, more and more quality assets will be added through MGNREGA in rural areas which will lead to poverty reduction. Shri Mathur said that more than 7 crore labourers have their Aadhar numbers seeded with bank accounts and more than 95 percent workers are getting their wages directly into their bank accounts or post office accounts through DBT. This has gone a long way in checking corruption in the rural job scheme.

In his remarks, Chairman, ISRO, Dr Kiran Kumar said that application of technology for rural development will go a great way in planning and execution of projects in a transparent manner. He said that space technology is increasingly being used up to the grassroots level for not only visualisation of the assets but also for terrain mapping to undertake other developmental works like watershed and drought-proofing measures.