In news
Union Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment launched a Mobile Application “Swachhata Abhiyan”
Background
Census 2011 reported the existence of more than 26 Lakh insanitary latrines in the country. The existence of insanitary latrines is the main reason for manual scavenging. “Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013” mandates survey of insanitary latrines, their demolition and construction of sanitary latrines in their place. The government has been implementing Swachh Bharat Mission for identification of insanitary latrines and the construction of sanitary latrines in their place.
In the absence of any authentic data base regarding the location of insanitary latrines, it has been decided to seek the help of NGOs, Social Organisations and general public for collection and compilation of the data. A mobile application “Swachhata Abhiyan” has been developed for this purpose.
About the app
This mobile application “Swachhata Abhiyan” has been developed to identify and geotag the data of insanitary latrines and manual scavengers so that the insanitary latrines can be replaced with sanitary latrines and rehabilitate all the manual scavengers to provide dignity of life to them.
With this, if citizens notice any insanitary latrine or manual scavenger, their details may be uploaded using the application
What is geo-tagging?
- Geotagging, or GeoTagging, is the process of adding geographical identification metadata to various media such as a geotagged photograph or video, websites, SMS messages, QR Codes or RSS feeds and is a form of geospatial metadata.
- Geotagging can help users find a wide variety of location-specific information. For instance, one can find images taken near a given location by entering latitude and longitude coordinates into a Geotagging-enabled image search engine.
- The idea is to use mobile-based geo-tagging and a Geographical Information System (GIS).
- Geo-tagging uses latitudes and longitudes to precisely locate where an image is taken. It gives reference points for users to analyze satellite data.
Geotagging used in government schemes
Presently, geo-tagging is being used in some of the government schemes such as MGNREGA(the first scheme that experimented with geo-tagging), Pradhan Mantri Awaas Yojana (Grameen), Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), for toilet construction under Swachh Bharat, as well as for highways and urban housing.
