Assets or facilities created under the MGNREGA scheme in each panchayat will now be geo-tagged along with photographs of the facility through a partnership between Minisrty of Rural Development and ISRO, according to a PIB release. Geo-tagging assets will allow the government to enforce better monitoring, recording, and terrain mapping for future development works. Assets created under MGNREGA include farming/agricultural facilities like man-made canals, dams, and irrigation & sanitation projects, among others. Such assets will be geo-tagged with pictures, and will be visible on the government owned Bhuvan mapping platform that provides 2D/3D maps, and other geospatial applications, the release added. Note that since Bhuvan is an open-source mapping platform, these assets will probably be visible for public viewing as well. Geo-tagged assets will not only ease identification and monitoring; it can also be implemented to perform additional developmental works on existing assets like creating watershed and drought-proofing irrigation facilities through terrain mapping. Geo-tagging assets has more advantages The ministry releases certain amount of funds, which is directly transferred to the beneficiary who is responsible for building assets in panchayts and other rural locations. Some existing/older assets may require renovation, or at times, con-joined with newer projects. Since the inception of MNREGA, there were allegations of corruption and leakage of funds during transfer. To tackle these setbacks, the government introduced a revamped ‘Fixed Asset Register (FAR) last month, which is designed to easily retrieve information about assets through properties like Asset ID, location, convergence schemes, renovations performed, beneficiary name and…
