The greatest obstacle to the spread of GIS, feel experts, is the access, or rather the lack of it, to authentic and accurate and unstoppable information - the soul of GIS. Says Subhan Khan of NISTADS, "In India, it is particularly bad. Here, it would appear, every piece of information is crassified."

Getting maps from the Survey of India (Sol) is a maddening ordeal, says Qureshi. For one, maps of any area lying within 5O-100 km of the national boundary are restricted, while it is impossible to get maps of "sensitive" areas, such as Jammu and Kashmir, the entire Northeast and the 2 archipelagos, the Andaman and Nicobar islands and Lakshadweep. So it is practically impossible to do any GIS studies in these areas.

Says V Asthana of the School of Environmental Sciences at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi, "I recently did a project to estimate the economic loss to coastal people if the sea level rose by a metre. The biggest glitch in the study was obtaining the Sol's topographical maps. Despite it being a government-sponsored project, it took us 3-4 months to get the maps."

As though secrecy is not frustrating enough, there is a perennial shortage of maps of even unrestricted areas. And, many of them haven't been updated since Adam lost his rib. But Sol officials admit that the Official Secrets Act should be amended and that many of the restrictions should, and can, be done away with.

The secrecy about information is pervasive. For example, the Indian army is reportedly using GIS for various applications like terrain-mapping and battlefield simulations, but, like the Sol, they are paranoically tight-lipped about it. The same can be said about the National Water Commission. Any information on the Ganga basin is a closely guarded secret.

• GIS is prohibitively expensive

• Users must have sources for digitised data, computers and trained personnel

• There is little GIS infrastructure at the village level

• India GIS maps do not have a large enoough scale

• Traditional data-gathering agencies follow different systems, and do not provide digitised data. Thus, both duplication and expensive data conversion are unavoidable

• Data gathered is often doctored

• No GIS project has been carried out beyond the project report stage

• There is little understanding in senior management of the impact of GIS on government programmes

• There is no umbrella organisation which lokks after GIS projects