New Delhi: In a major development for India, ISRO has mapped every village in the country from space and the satellite data will go a long way in supporting gram panchayats in decentralized planning, monitoring of assets and improving governance at the grassroots level.ISRO announced on National Panchayati Raj Day on Friday that it has completed high-resolution land use and land cover mapping for the entire country at a scale of 1:10000 – this means 1 cm on the map represents just 100 meters on the ground, enough to distinguish a paddy field from a pond. According to the 2011 census, there were 649,481 villages in India.ISRO has made this satellite data available to government organizations. “This dataset supports gram panchayat development plans and is integrated as one of the information layers on the Gramachitra (village map) web portal of the Ministry of Panchayati Raj, enabling stronger, data-driven governance at the grassroots level,” ISRO posted on Friday. Grammarchitra web portal is a tool designed to help local bodies take data-driven development decisions.Mapping of villages will help in effective preparation of Gram Panchayat development plans, enable data-driven decision making and assist in identifying land resources and utilization patterns. Overall, it will improve transparency and accountability in the implementation of government projects in rural India.The effort is part of a larger initiative to use satellite imagery, including data from ISRO’s Bhuvan Geoportal, for disaster management, agricultural planning and infrastructure development in rural and remote areas. Mapping of all the villages of the country by ISRO will go a long way in strengthening democracy at the grassroots level.