Currently, geospatial information and services are grossly underutilized in making grassroots-level interventions for protecting livelihood, ensuring food and water security, and facilitating resilience and sustainability for village/ town development. The grass root level stakeholders viz. social leaders, socialpreneurs, officials in the Panchayat Raj system, NGOs and CBOs are not aware of or unable to utilize the enormous potential of the wealth of information created by the geospatial technology providers. On the other hand, in recent years, masses in urban and rural areas are becoming technology savvy as they use mobile phones and internet-based services in daily life. ‘Now’ is the high time to give geospatial technology tools to the hands of stakeholders who drive development at the grassroots level.

‘DigitalMaps@Work in Villages’ will provide a platform to showcase the capabilities of Geospatial technologies to grassroots level stakeholders besides listening to and addressing their major challenges. The proposed forum will change the way the geospatial industry is perceived as a ‘hi-tech’ industry to a more ‘socially relevant’ and demand driven service industry, where demand emerges from stakeholders at the grassroots level. These interventions steer the geospatial and space industry to align with the needs of the entire range of stakeholders involved in sustainable rural development.