Soon, navigate rural roads as easily as in cities

NEW DELHI: You may be able to drive from a metro to any village, anywhere in the country, with the help of GPS. But once you enter the village, the map often gives up.From there, directions usually sound like this: take a left from the peepal tree, go past the hand pump, turn near the school, ask for the house behind the chaupal .That kind of rural navigation may soon change.The Ministry of Panchayati Raj is working on a standardised digital framework to code, grade and name every village road. The idea is to make village roads traceable on digital maps and link them to a national database so that emergency services, postal workers, govt officials, delivery agents and visitors can reach the right address easily.At present, most village roads do not have standard names or codes.

Outsiders often depend on landmarks — dangerous during emergencies.In the era of smartphones and digital services, villages, too, need a standard identification system for internal roads, panchayati raj secretary Vivek Bharadwaj told TOI . “A code and name are very important, as the lack of it presents many challenges, particularly in emergencies,” he said.How system will workA consultation document prepared by the ministry, the ‘Intra-Village Road Coding and Grading System’ — uploaded for public comment till July 14 —proposes a three-tier classification for village roads: ‘main road’, ‘cross road’ and ‘other road’.

Each road will be assigned a unique alphanumeric code that identifies its location from the state level down to the village.In simple terms, a road that is today identified only as “the lane near the well” or “the road behind the school” could get a standard code, a name and a precise digital marker.Once assigned, the codes would be visible with road data uploaded on ‘Gram Manchitra’, a geospatial planning and monitoring app of the ministry.

The proposal also talks about putting signboards on each road and QR codes. Scanning the code would provide access to road information, maintenance history and navigation data through Gram Manchitra.Why it mattersRoad coding is also a way to improve transparency in rural development work.At present, the same village road may appear under different names in different records. This can create confusion, duplication and scope for corruption when work is sanctioned under different schemes.

A standard code would make it easier to check whether a road already exists in govt records, whether work’s been sanctioned for it, and whether funds have been spent on it.Which villages?The exercise will initially cover villages under the SVAMITVA (Survey of Villages and Mapping with Improvised Technology in Village Areas) scheme, which maps rural inhabited areas.Around 3,38,000 villages have been notified under the scheme, and drone surveys have been completed in about 3.3 lakh villages so far.

India has around 6 lakh inhabited villages, and the govt plans to gradually bring all of them under the coding framework.Panchayats will play a central role in execution. They will be the primary authority for identifying, naming and grading roads within their jurisdiction.Bharadwaj said panchayats already had the legal authority to assign names to roads. “We hope that once codes are assigned to roads, the panchayats will be motivated to carry out the naming of roads too,” he added. The ministry says it hopes to roll out the framework later this year.