‘Removing Regional Disparities’ – an article contributed by Dr L.R Yadav, Senior Technical Director and Shri R.S Singh Principal System Analyst, NIC, Lucknow was published as the cover story in one of the leading magazines of GIS in India - ‘Geospatial Today’. The magazine is mainly focused on publishing innovations in geospatial sector and always highlights projects that have remarkably changed the working methodology using GIS tools and impacted the citizens in a big way. The May 2013 issue of the magazine features in details two projects implemented by NIC, Uttar Pradesh in coordination with the state planning department to remove gaps in decentralized planning, promoting sustainable and equitable development at the village, block and district panchayat levels.

Both the Geo Portals e-Manchitra and Spider have been developed to provide up-to-date and real-time data to planners, administrators and public representatives, marking a move from e-governance to g-governance. Spider is an internet based data entry and retrieval system that facilitates decentralized, online data entry and updating on more than 4000 parameters thereby providing local level information in digital form for decision making and e-MANCHITRA (Map Based Analytical Charting and Reporting Application) aims at eliminating inter regional disparities that persist as a problem in decentralization process, by generating grass root level thematic atlases based on SPIDER indicators.

The complete article is available at http://geospatialtoday.com/gst/index.php