A lost orbit: How Budget lets India’s geospatial momentum drift
India's Union Budget for 2026 dropped like a damp squib for the geospatial sector. Last year, under Modi 3.0's early buzz, we saw real hustle. GIS mapping is exploding in rural land records, drones swarming surveys, and states like UP and Karnataka are digitising millions of acres. Momentum was building after decades of bureaucratic foot-dragging. But this budget? It barely nods at it, opting instead for a tepid pat on the back for space tech. That's not just shortsighted. it's a recipe for squandering India's edge in a global geospatial gold rush.
Flash back to 2025. The Digital India Land Records Modernisation Programme (DILRMP) hit warp speed, with GIS tech overlaying satellite imagery on cadastral maps. In Haryana my backyard here in Gurugram farmers got unique parcel IDs, slashing land disputes by 40 per cent overnight. Drones? They weren't toys anymore. Rajasthan deployed 500+ units to map arid wastelands, feeding data into the SVAMITVA scheme that handed property cards to 1.5 crore villagers. This wasn't pie-in-the-sky; it was tangible. Crop yields up 15 per cent from precision farming insights, urban planners dodging billion-rupee snarls in metro expansions. The momentum screamed scalability: integrate it with PM-KISAN payouts, disaster alerts, even electoral rolls. Why pivot now? The budget whispers about "enhanced geospatial capabilities" but funnels just a 12 per cent hike to ISRO-led space initiatives, peanuts compared to the 25 per cent leap last year. Space is sexy: Gaganyaan dreams, Aditya-L1 selfies from the sun. But here's the rub-a lower budgetary rise won't ignite the industry. Private players are bootstrapping rockets, sure, but without fat R&D grants, they'll chase foreign contracts over domestic geospatial grunt work. India's space economy, pegged at $8 billion, needs rocket fuel, not drips. A stingy bump means delayed satellites for real-time GIS feeds , think NavIC upgrades stalling, leaving drone operators blind in monsoons. It starves the ecosystem, pushing talent to Starlink gigs abroad.
Enter the National Geospatial Mission (NGM), the elephant the budget tiptoed around. Announced in 2025 with fanfare, it's supposed to be India's geospatial moonshot, a unified platform merging Bhuvan, NRSC data, and private APIs for everything from urban twins to climate modelling. Imagine Gurugram's traffic snarls predicted via drone swarms linked to GIS land records, no more pothole roulette. But without budget muscle, NGM risks becoming another shelfware like the National GIS Policy of 2017. We need INR 5,000 crore annually to wire 10 lakh villages by 2030, train 50,000 drone pilots, and build hyperspectral imaging hubs. Last year's 2,200 crore allocation built the runway, this year's limp 8 per cent increase? It won't get planes off the ground.
Critics will holler, fiscal prudence amid deficits, but geospatial isn't spendthrift, it's ROI rocket science. Every rupee in GIS saves Rs 10 in disputes; drone-mapped irrigation in Bihar already boosted farmer incomes by 20 per cent. Momentum from 2025 could've turbocharged this: scale SVAMITVA nationwide, mandate GIS for all infra bids, unleash drone corridors from Kutch to Kohima. Instead, the budget yawns.
The saving grace? All these new infra initiatives INR 11 lakh crore outlay for roads, rails, green energy will desperately need geospatial smarts. High-speed rail from Delhi to Ahmedabad? It'll devour GIS for alignment, land acquisition, and drone-monitored progress. Gati Shakti's mega-push demands real-time land record overlays to avoid the usual acquisition quagmires that delay projects by years. Semiconductor parks in Gujarat? Drone surveys for seismic zoning. Even the INR 1 lakh crore urban redevelopment will lean on NGM-style mapping to dodge slum encroachments. These behemoths create pull: states scrambling for GIS talent, private firms pitching drone fleets. It's a backdoor boom budget skimps direct funding, but infra hunger forces adoption. We've seen it before: Demonetisation accidentally juiced UPI, COVID lockdowns birthed Aarogya Setu.
Still, this is no substitute for bold vision. FM Sitharaman could've doubled down: a Geospatial Development Fund, tax breaks for drone makers, NGM as a INR 10,000 crore mission mode project. Tie it to Atmanirbhar-export GIS tech to Africa, where land titling lags as ours did a decade ago. Momentum matters; last year's wins were fragile. Stall now, and we'll cede ground to China's BeiDou dominance or Europe's Copernicus. India's geospatial story isn't over; infra tsunamis will drag it forward. But the budget's timidity risks a lost decade. Time to rev the engines, not idle in neutral.
The writer is Geospatial Transformation thought leader. He is Chief Strategy & Growth Officer NeoGeoInfo Technologies; views are personal
