News that thousands of acres of government land have been illegally encroached upon in different parts of Odisha has not been an astounding fact. Some other states like Madhya Pradesh, Assam and Maharashtra have also been the top competitors in having land encroachment problems. The types of land encroached include forest land, public land and private land as well but nothing could be more inconceivable than the fact that even crematorium in the capital city of Odisha is being usurped by land mafias. Such disappearances of common lands have been a consequence of gradual but pervasive opportunistic private land holdings adjacent to common lands.
However, it is important to note that land encroachment is a state subject and hence each state resolves this problem in its own way, developing its own solutions.
India and its states, since very long, have an eye on Artificial intelligence and seek to use it as a probable solution to recurring problems. Earlier drones, artificial intelligence and satellite imageries have been used to monitor the floodplains of several rivers one them being The Yamuna River.
Again, today, linking the two and two together the state government of Odisha launched an intelligence system with a view to address the aforementioned problems of land encroachment in the state and it has been termed as “BLUIS”.
“BLUIS” which is an acronym for Bhubaneshwar Land Use Intelligence System is one of the eight technology driven solutions by Odisha for the General Administration and Public Grievances department under the 5T Initiative. 5T initiative is a model of governance introduced in August 2019 which includes Technology, Transparency, Teamwork and Time leading to Transformation. The 5T initiative requires each department of the state government to draw up an annual work plan for a faster, better public service delivery system leading to achieving transformational goals.
Launched on the 8th of July 2020 by the honorable chief minister of the state, Naveen Patnaik, BLUIS has enabled the state government to declare Odisha as the first state in the country to tap artificial intelligence and space technology as a solution for safeguarding the government land.
A development of Odisha Space Applications Centre (ORSAC), the apex body in the state for space technology applications, BLUIS is a web and mobile based solution, created to monitor all the government lands under Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) in the state. It works primarily on the system of geo-tagging or geo positioning , which is a process of adding geographical information to media in the form of metadata, and usually consists of latitude and longitude coordinates, altitude, bearing, distance accuracy data, place names and perhaps a time stamp, enabling the user to find location specific information from a device.
With this mechanism real time satellite imagery can be availed and any development or illegal settlement taking place on the government land can be detected through artificial intelligence.
The mobile application would be used to validate alerts as land use change generated from satellite imageries will be automatically available in BLUIS mobile apps for department officials as per their jurisdiction and data will be stored in the web portal for further analysis. Moreover, the evidence of encroachment is uploaded on the App as geo-tagged images and videos.
BLUIS is designed to cover flaws such as lack of adequate transparency and accountability in existing mechanisms which are decades older. With land grabbing problems spiraling each day drastic transformation became the need of the hour and BLUIS just solved this purpose.
Modern solutions to age old problems if proved successful could be spread and adopted across the nation, and therefore, would result in unified well-being.
Having said that, innovations from different parts should be encouraged which help reduce illegal and criminal activities by greater vigilance and foster national growth.
Written by: Mahima Ahlawat and Ridhi Khurana
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