C-GARD: Incorporating rural wisdom
The technological and economic advances has only widened the urban-rural divide leaving the majority of the population of the country languishing in preindependence conditions. Over the years, several government agencies and a large number of voluntary organisations were involved in developing technologies that cater to the development of rural India. Unfortunately, these technologies hardly touched the lives of rural population. The one technology that has the potential to enrich rural lives and promises to bring in revolutionary changes is - geospatial technology. Understanding this capability, the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD), with its mandate to channelise and develop policies and programmes for creating social infrastructure for rural development, set up the Centre for Geo-informatics Application in Rural Development (C-GARD) at its Hyderabad centre.