Map wars

Google is a habit. It is the new way of an old search, the modern equivalent of going to a library. Life is a search. Google presides over it. You may not like it. But Google managed to get that coveted position because few of us imagined this is how it will be. Having got there, Google has become blood in our veins, certainly my veins, for there isn’t a day of Internet and me that does not include Google.

Fantastic past

When it comes to the Survey of India challenging Google on its mapping activities in the country, more people will recall Google from their everyday life and a lesser number, the venerable Survey. It may also be true that more people like Google and not the venerable Survey because the Survey isn’t as everyday or easily accessed.

Increasingly, these will be the parameters deciding what maps we use to navigate in life. Only some of us will bother to remember the Survey for its body of work, its link to the Great Trigonometric Survey, the stories of its brilliant mathematicians and adventurous surveyors (ex: Radhanath Sikdar’s calculation of the height of Everest and Pundit Nain Singh Rawat’s walks in Tibet), even its privileged promotion on boundaries rendered strategic by war. I love the history of the Survey and one day hope to learn more of the Survey’s past work, particularly the science to it. But that is the past. In direct proportion to that exclusive world fading, the Survey — if it does not become contemporary — will find itself falling back on law to protect its interests, which is not what a map maker should be doing or how it should be known.

Challenging future

A lot of this has to do with the Indian approach. Indians are good at science and mathematics. I am an exception; I struggled with these subjects in school and was glad to find refuge in the arts when I reached college. Years later when I got into high altitude trekking and mountaineering, map reading became essential. The Indian Mountaineering Institute, however, meant reliving school days. I got entangled in compass, and much else. Corresponding to how much I was frustrated, my instructor and the talented ones in the class, loomed infallible, victorious mountaineers.

A decade later, I re-trained with a foreign outdoor school. They emphasised looking around. We used the compass to orient a map. That done, we tried matching what we noticed in the surrounding geography to features indicated on maps. From being a tyrant, the map became a helpful tool to navigate. I learnt. At some point, I suspect, the Survey and how it got enmeshed with India’s strategic establishment, privileged to go where other’s aren’t allowed to by law — I think this robbed the organisation of dynamism to imagine like Google.

Today, the Survey’s maps are highly respected by Indian mountaineers for their accuracy. But every mountaineer/trekker, even if he hasn’t got a Survey map, looks up Google for aerial views of where he is headed.

Google is what the Survey could have been but never became. If the Survey had leveraged the metaphor in its work to mean sense of direction and friendly, usable information, it and not Google would be my everyday companion. It would have hosted the map-making competition, since rendered controversial due to Google. Instead, it approached the police to check the future while we Google for what happened to the Google-Survey stand-off.

(The author is a freelance journalist based in Mumbai)