Geospatial data policy refers to the rules governing how Geographic Information System (GIS) data, maps, and location information can be acquired, produced, and used in India. In February 2021, those rules changed more sharply than at any other point in the sector’s history, removing the approvals, security clearances, and licences that had long stood between an Indian organization and the map data it wanted to build with.
Introduction: The Day India Stopped Regulating Its Own Maps
For most of India’s modern history, acquiring or producing detailed geospatial data required navigating a system built around prior approval. An organization that wanted to survey land, publish a detailed map, or update location data had to clear that process first, regardless of how routine the underlying work actually was.
On 15 February 2021, that system changed overnight. The government announced complete deregulation for Indian entities: no prior approvals, no security clearances, no licences required to acquire, generate, or use geospatial data and mapping services. What had been a restricted, permission-gated asset, for Indian organizations, became an open one.
What Changed in India’s Geospatial Data Policy and Why It Matters
India’s geospatial data policy shift replaced a licence-and-clearance regime with open access for Indian entities. This wasn’t a minor procedural simplification; it removed the specific friction that had made routine mapping and survey work slow and administratively heavy for years.
This matters because geospatial data underpins an enormous range of downstream activity, from land records to logistics routing to disaster response planning. When acquiring or updating that data required clearance first, every one of those downstream uses inherited the same delay. Removing the gate at the source changed what became possible everywhere data flows from it.
India’s Liberalisation Timeline: The 2021 Guidelines, the National Geospatial Policy 2022, and Operation Dronagiri
It is worth being precise about the sequence here, since these are two distinct policy moments, not one. The 2021 Guidelines for Acquiring and Producing Geospatial Data and Geospatial Data Services, announced on 15 February 2021, deregulated the acquisition and production side, removing the same set of requirements described above. At the announcement, Professor Ashutosh Sharma, then Secretary of the Department of Science and Technology, described the reform as capable of building a “one lakh crore business by 2030 plus economic impact through development,” a figure stated as an aspiration at that briefing rather than a binding target written into the guidelines themselves.
Nearly two years later, on 28 December 2022, the government notified the National Geospatial Policy 2022, a separate document with a different job: setting a long-term vision extending to 2035 and building the institutional architecture around the sector, including the Geospatial Data Promotion and Development Committee. The Union Budget 2025-26 backed this with a ₹100 crore allocation to the National Geospatial Mission for foundational geospatial infrastructure and data.
Operation Dronagiri, launched on 13 November 2024, is best understood as a pilot initiative under this policy, not a national rollout. It currently operates in five states, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra, bringing together government departments, industry partners, and startups around an Integrated Geospatial Data Sharing Interface. A nationwide rollout under a public-private partnership model is envisioned for Operation Dronagiri, but has not been confirmed as executed beyond this five-state pilot.
How Liberalisation Changed the Way Organisations Access and Use Geospatial Data
Before 2021, an organization needing geospatial data for a project had to factor in approval timelines before any actual survey or mapping work could begin, regardless of how sensitive or routine the underlying data actually was. That gating step disappeared for Indian entities under the 2021 Guidelines, and the change in practice has been substantial: individuals, companies, and government agencies can now process, build applications, and develop solutions using geospatial data without seeking prior clearance for that baseline activity.
The National Geospatial Policy 2022 builds on this by treating publicly funded geospatial data as a public good, meaning datasets generated with government money, aside from classified data collected by security or law enforcement agencies, become accessible for scientific, economic, and developmental use. This is what turns deregulation from a legal change into a practical one: data that organizations previously had to negotiate access to now sits in a default-open posture.
From Restricted Asset to Shared Infrastructure: The Platform Response
Deregulating data acquisition only matters if organizations can actually find and use the data once it’s no longer restricted. That’s the gap that ready-to-use data infrastructure is built to close, and it’s a sequence worth stating plainly: policy liberalization came first, and platforms built to take advantage of that openness followed, not the other way around.
Indo ArcGIS Living Atlas is one example of this kind of infrastructure. The platform hosts more than 100 content categories of ready-to-use geospatial data for India, drawing over 80 million annual data requests, and includes OpenStreetMap data layers alongside its curated content. This is worth stating precisely: these figures describe what the Living Atlas platform itself provides, not a measure of the geospatial economy’s overall growth, which liberalization enabled far more broadly than any single platform can represent.
An organization drawing on this kind of open data typically starts in ArcGIS Online, where curated content can be accessed and shared without setting up its own infrastructure first. From there, deeper spatial analysis usually moves into ArcGIS Pro, the desktop environment built for working with that data at a more detailed level.
Sharing the results of that analysis is a separate step again. ArcGIS Hub suits organizations that want to publish an ongoing, browsable data portal, while ArcGIS StoryMaps fits a more narrative, one-off explanation of findings meant for a broader audience.
Beyond Policy Text: What the Data Shows About Sector Growth
Policy announcements are easy to state; the harder question is what actually changed on the ground. Two figures are commonly repeated alongside discussion of India’s geospatial sector, and both deserve a dating correction that most coverage skips.
The claim that India’s geospatial economy would cross ₹63,000 crore by 2025, growing at 12.8 percent and employing more than 10 lakh people mainly through geospatial startups, traces to a specific statement by Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh at the UN World Geospatial Information Congress in October 2022, not to the National Geospatial Policy 2022 itself. That statement projected forward to a 2025 horizon which has, as of this writing, already passed, which means the figure should be read as a 2022-era projection rather than a current, live statistic.
What is more directly documented is activity tied to specific government programs. Under the SVAMITVA Scheme, the Survey of India has surveyed and mapped more than 2.8 lakh villages across Andhra Pradesh, Haryana, and Karnataka using drone technology, converting land records and property rights from paper-based systems into drone-mapped spatial data. The Survey of India has also established a pan-India network of Continuously Operating Reference Stations to support high-accuracy positioning nationally.
How Indian Organisations Are Building on the Liberalised Data Regime Today
Self-reliance is not incidental language in either the 2021 announcement or the 2022 policy; it’s a stated goal, explicitly framed around reducing India’s dependency on foreign geospatial data providers and building Indian companies capable of competing globally in the mapping ecosystem. That framing shows up concretely in the policy’s support for geospatial incubation centers, industry accelerators, and dedicated Geospatial Technology Parks intended to grow domestic startups rather than only open access to existing data.
The National Geospatial Policy 2022 is also explicitly linked to PM Gati Shakti, the government’s multi-modal infrastructure planning platform, where spatial planning tools developed by ISRO and BISAG-N support coordinated infrastructure planning across ministries. This connection illustrates how liberalized data feeds directly into large-scale government planning, not just private-sector applications.
Organizations evaluating how liberalized geospatial data fits into their own planning and operations can review National Government and State and Local Government solutions from Esri India to see how this kind of data infrastructure supports public-sector planning work at both levels.
Challenges and the Road Ahead
State-level licensing hasn’t fully caught up with central deregulation
The 2021 Guidelines liberalized geospatial data policy at the national level, but state departments and agencies don’t always operate on updated internal practices at the same pace, which means an organization can encounter licensing friction locally even where central rules no longer require it.
Security-sensitive zones remain restricted regardless of general liberalization
The broader deregulation explicitly carved out classified geospatial data collected by security and law enforcement agencies, and certain sensitive zones remain governed by their own restrictions independent of the general opening. Liberalization was never framed as unconditional, and this distinction matters for organizations assuming blanket access.
Data quality and currency gaps persist even where access is technically open
Removing a licensing requirement doesn’t automatically make the underlying dataset accurate, current, or complete. An organization can now legally access a dataset that is nonetheless outdated or inconsistent, which means open access and usable data quality remain two separate problems.
A skills shortage limits who can actually use liberalized data, not just access it
Being able to legally acquire geospatial data doesn’t guarantee an organization has the in-house expertise to process, analyze, or build meaningfully on it. The National Geospatial Policy 2022 explicitly names capacity development and geospatial education as a focus area for exactly this reason.
Liberalization also has its limits. Removing licensing requirements does not itself produce accurate data, train the people who need to use it, or resolve which government department owns a given dataset when multiple agencies have overlapping claims. Being upfront about what policy change alone does not solve is part of an honest account of what this reform actually achieved.
The distance between February 2021’s deregulation announcement and today’s landscape (an Integrated Geospatial Data Sharing Interface pilot in five states, a Living Atlas platform serving over 80 million annual data requests, and a national policy with a vision running to 2035) reflects a sector that has moved from asset-gated to infrastructure-built in under five years. What happens next depends less on further policy text and more on whether the skills, data quality, and institutional coordination catch up with the access that liberalization has opened.
FAQs
1.What did India’s 2021 geospatial data guidelines change?
The 2021 Guidelines, announced on 15 February 2021, removed the requirement for Indian entities to obtain prior approvals, security clearances, or licences before acquiring, generating, or using geospatial data and mapping services. This replaced a permission-gated system with open access for Indian organizations, aside from classified data collected by security agencies.
2.What is the National Geospatial Policy 2022?
The National Geospatial Policy 2022, notified on 28 December 2022, sets India’s long-term geospatial vision to 2035 and builds institutional architecture like the Geospatial Data Promotion and Development Committee. It is distinct from the 2021 Guidelines, which handled deregulation; the 2022 policy focuses on vision, infrastructure, and governance.
3.What is Operation Dronagiri?
Operation Dronagiri is a pilot initiative launched on 13 November 2024 under the National Geospatial Policy 2022, currently operating in five states: Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra. A nationwide rollout is envisioned under a public-private partnership model but has not been confirmed as executed beyond this pilot phase.
4.How has data liberalisation affected India’s geospatial economy?
Liberalisation removed licensing barriers and enabled infrastructure like the Indo ArcGIS Living Atlas, which now serves over 80 million annual data requests across more than 100 content categories. A separate, often-repeated 2022 ministerial projection estimated the geospatial economy would cross ₹63,000 crore by 2025, though that figure describes a specific 2022 projection to a now-past horizon rather than a current statistic.
5.What are the main challenges still facing India’s geospatial data ecosystem?
The main challenges are state-level licensing practices that haven’t fully caught up with central deregulation, data quality and currency gaps even where access is technically open, and a skills shortage that limits who can meaningfully use liberalized data rather than simply access it. Security-sensitive zones also remain restricted regardless of the broader liberalization.
Written by
Esri India Marketing
