Information management in the Basic Services to the Urban Poor (BUSP) scheme in Kalyan Dombivili (Maharashtra, India) and implications for Geographic Information System (GIS) development

Urban poverty alleviation schemes in India continue to target mainly slum areas. An important aspect in the planning, implementation, and monitoring of such government schemes pertains to the procedure and practices of spatial and socio-spatial information management in municipal administration. Critical junctions in these practices include the selection of target areas and populations, land selection, land ownership clarification, and potential transfer of rights and ownership of land for construction of new buildings and relocation of slums, as well as the allocation of new housing units to scheme beneficiaries. Information management embedded in scheme implementation is therefore highly complex involving various administrative departments as well as non-administrative governance actors, including political representatives and private sector. This complexity makes the development of digital information and communication technology (ICT) in administration to manage information about slums, for instance through Geographic Information Systems (GIS), a difficult and politically non-neutral undertaking.