The UPA’s flagship programme, the Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, (MGNREGS) which promised hundred days of guaranteed employment in addition to development activities such as water harvesting, drought relief, and flood control, has attracted controversy ever since its launch in February 2006 because of claims of leakages and corruption in general.

Issues related to asset creation, taking up of trivial projects, sometimes absence of projects, and misappropriation of funds were common.

Even Congress minister Jairam Ramesh had to confess that the programme they introduced failed to create productive and durable assets.

However, things have changed since 2016, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in a drought review meeting, called for online recording and monitoring of assets to check leakages and for effective mapping of terrain for future development. For that, he suggested asset reporting through geo-tagging and uploading of photographs with hand-held devices.

What is Geo Tagging?

Geo-tagging is a process of adding geographical information such as latitude and longitude to various media such as photos or videos. It helps users find a wide variety of location-specific information from a device.