The Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) has come a long way from supplying requisite databases and technology tools for local self-governance to playing a pivotal role in making the national spatial data infrastructure a reality. Created in 1982 by the Department of Science and Technology as a multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional research and development programme, its vision was to “enable people, communities and institutions of local self-governance with the required databases and scientific tools for informed participation in local-self governance.”
Over these past two-and-a-half decades, it has evolved its own methodology and tools to help decentralise planning and empower local authorities. It has undertaken, funded and sponsored projects throughout the length and breadth of the country and made its presence felt in different states, directly or indirectly impacting the lives of the people, more often than not, bringing about a change for the better.
Its focus has always been on technological and institutional capacity building in a multi-level framework so that people can plan their own development, utilising local resources. It operates through its 45 district database centres in Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Orissa, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Haryana, Gujarat and North East region. They are run jointly with the respective state governments on a fund-sharing basis. Data requirements at the district level are assessed through these centres, which also test and use tools and technologies developed by R&D institutions for helping in local level planning.
To give a spatial dimension to the planning process at the grass roots level, NRDMS has developed GRAM ++, a GIS software, with the help of the United Nations Development Programme. It has also come up with modules like GRAMNET and GEO-SQL that facilitate resource network analysis and spatial querying. VEC VIEWER, GRAM – Drishti and GRAM-based Decision Support Modules are all a result of its efforts to help plan better be it water management, land use, energy budgeting, facility location or allocation or whatever.