Abhumjaad, a thickly forested 4,000 sq km straddling Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, literally means the hills of unknown and has been unmapped by the government agencies. On its outskirts, in district headquarters like Narayanpur, local legends are many, the stories adorned with magic realism. Yet, for the past 30 years, its unchartered territory is also home to the Maoist leadership fortified by its inaccessibility.
In a first since Independence, the process of mapping Abhujmaad began — surveying its villages and residents plot by plot, one village at a time. As Maoists are in huge numbers in this area, it has been mapped using satellite imagery. However, this is the first time that a team is going village to village, to identify which plot belongs to whom.
According to an Indian Express report, the goal of mapping the region is to create revenue records. Taman Singh Sonwani, District Collector Narayanpur reportedly said that they began their work from Akabeda village as the villagers themselves said that they wanted rights over their land.
“This project has been in the pipeline but this is the first time this is really happening,” he added.
The team doing this work has 12 members, including the Collector, the Tehsildar, and a technical team from IIT Roorkee. They match land divisions visible on satellite imagery to people on the ground.
Rohit Singh, Tehsildar, said that they collect the people of the village early in the morning and ask them to show their plots one by one. After the plot is identified, the team gives it an FID (field identification number). This technology works offline so the moment you come into the network, it gets uploaded onto the website.
Officials know it’s tought. Not only because of inaccessibility of the terrain but the Maoist threat as well. After Akabeda, the team went to Kodkanar and Nernar villages. As they returned to Narayanpur one night, a Maoist team killed Somaru Gota, the kotwar of the village, accusing him of working for the government.
The exercise is aimed at helping the government quickly build roads and other facilities to push back Maoist rebels, and bring in a wave of development to loosen the insurgents’ hold on local population.
