# GEOGRAPHICAL RECORD THE NATIONAL ATLAS OF INDIA Ashok K. Dutt UNIVERSITY OF AKRON The “National Atlas of India” is not only a significant contribution to understanding the geography of India but also one of the best national atlases in the world. $^{1}$ Published in English, the atlas contains eight volumes. As a product of the postcolonial era that is geared to economic development, particularly agriculture, this atlas unfolds divergent regional characteristics in the context of a nationwide perspective. The atlas is an excellent display of Indian capabilities: planned and prepared with extreme precision by Indian geographers, the set was printed in color by the Survey of India. The same organization published a preliminary edition of the “National Atlas,” but the 1982 atlas is far more elaborate and detailed than its predecessor. $^{2}$ The 1957 edition was nonetheless a good beginning, but the new set is the most comprehensive, extensive, and accurate of all atlases published on India and South Asia. No other atlas provides a macro and meso regional treatment of India based on in-depth, data-oriented research and field investigation as does the “National Atlas.” It is even asserted in the preface that the set is the “world’s largest national atlas.” The originator and the guiding force of the atlas was S. P. Chatterjee, who until 1968 had been head of the geography department at the University of Calcutta. He founded and was named director of the National Atlas Organization in 1956. He held the position until his retirement in 1968. Prime Minister Nehru took special interest in establishing this organization as a part of the apparatus of the central government. In the summer of 1955 Chatterjee showed his pilot maps to Nehru and was much encouraged. Chatterjee pointed out that only a handful of countries had published national atlases, and that the U.S.S.R. was the only large country to have one. The publication of a national atlas was then a challenging project not only because India was a large, recently independent country with limited resources but also because it was a democracy. Chatterjee had previous experience preparing and publishing a sizable atlas, “Bengal in Maps.” $^{3}$ He undertook the challenge of a national atlas and succeeded. He was supported by a large group of geographers who were primarily trained in the British system of traditional geography that prevailed in Indian universities after the British gave up political control of the country. The National Atlas Organization with a centralized office in Calcutta has a hierarchy of officers and technical and nontechnical personnel. S. P. Dasgupta followed Chatterjee as director in the late 1960s. B. K. Dutt replaced Dasgupta in 1982. Currently the organization has a director, a joint director, three deputy-directors, approximately twelve research officers, eighteen scientific officers, and more than 200 research assistants and technical-support staff, in addition to the numerous secretarial and maintenance personnel. The organization is by far the largest employer of geographers in a single structure in India, and they hold top-level positions. ## FORMAT The eight-volume atlas has an extralarge format $(22.6 \times 17.2$ inches); it is a hardbound, multicolored work that sells for approximately U.S. 150.00. Consistent with the characteristics of traditional atlas cartography, all bar, pie, time-series, and other diagrams are integrated with the countrywide or regional maps. The volumes vary from a minimum of eleven map plates to a maximum of forty-three. A four-to-a-sheet format accounts for approximately one-fifth of the maps. Most of the remainder are on a two-page spread and are 20 inches wide and 26.5 inches long; these plates or sheets account for 78 percent of the maps in the atlas. Twenty-one maps, each larger than a two-page area, have a one-fourth-page or one-half-page fold-out. The map area in the atlas is 118,539 square inches. Seven scales have been used to portray oceanic, countrywide, regional, subregional, and urban space. Approximately 29 percent of the maps are at 1:1,000,000 scale; 17 percent at 1:2,000,000; 27 percent at 1:6,000,000; and 25 percent at 1:12,000,000. The remaining 2 percent are shown at three different scales. For the two-page map of India, a 1:6,000,000 scale was used, while a scale of 1:12,000,000 was adopted for the maps of India that fit four to a sheet. Almost half of the maps in the atlas show India as a whole. Specific scales were selected to fit the level of regional display. Five macroregional sections—North, South, East, West, and Central—were mapped at 1:2,000,000, while sixteen mesoregions, including the Andaman and Nicobar islands, have a 1:1,000,000 scale (Fig. 1). The scale used for city maps is 1:25,000. Only one city sheet (Calcutta) was included in the current set, but maps of Bombay, Delhi, Hyderabad, and Madras are in press. The Calcutta Metropolitan district, the only metropolitan area represented separately in the atlas, has a scale of 1:100,000. The scale on the plate for the Indian Ocean is 1:25,000,000. Four different projections are used to ensure correct depiction of space. A conical equalarea projection with two standard parallels was adopted for maps at scales of 1:2,000,000, 1:6,000,000, and 1:12,000,000. The maps with a scale of 1:1,000,000 are on an international modified polyconic projection. For the five city maps, the organization developed its own graticule, based on Albers conical equalarea projection with two standard parallels. The map for the Arabian Sea, which is in press, and one for the Indian Ocean are on an oblique azimuthal equalarea projection. ![](images/fac642a04ee531e891eca194ea5f85330a3f604b496d406e044fbf49708ca4f4.jpg) FIG. 1—Sixteen sheets cover India at the mesoregional scale of 1:1,000,000 with convenient latitudinal and longitudinal divisions. The name for each sheet is shown. The inset shows the coverage at the macroregional scale of 1:2,000,000. ## CONTENT The “National Atlas” comprises eight volumes. The topical content of each volume is as follows: Volume I—general and political; Volume II—physical geography, geomorphology, and minerals; Volume III—climate, biogeography, and water resources; Volume IV—population, transportation, and tourism; Volume V—comprehensive landuse and industry; Volume VI—agriculture and related activities; Volume VII—social geography, demography, settlement patterns, agricultural landholdings, labor, and states; and Volume VIII—history, culture, and urban landuses. The 220 sheets of the atlas contain 274 maps. There are seven major categories and eighteen subcategories (Table I). The agricultural subcategory has five subdivisions that are dispersed among volumes III, V, VI, and VII. This subcategory accounts for the largest single grouping of maps in the atlas. In contrast, industry receives surprisingly little coverage, although more than one-third of the atlas is devoted to economic topics. TABLE I—CLASSIFICATION OF ATLAS CONTENTS

CATEGORY	MAPS
CATEGORY	N	% of atlas	Rank by %
Introductory	23	10	5
General	4	2
Political	19	8
Physical	74	21	2
Physical	24	10
Geomorphology	9	3
Climate	40	7
Soil	1	1
Population	27	11	4
Population	20	8
Demography	7	3
Economic	87	36	1
Extractive	15	7
Industrial	14	3
Commercial/transport	18	10
Agricultural	40	16
Cultural	43	16	3
Cultural	18	8
Historical	17	2
Urban landuse	2	1
Settlement	4	2
Social	2	1
Regional	13	6	6
Miscellaneous	7	2	7
Total	274	$102^a$

Sources: Calculated by author; classification scheme provided by Robert B. Kent. $^{a}$ Column does not add to 100 percent because of rounding. The data for the maps were compiled from a variety of sources: governmental and other publications, aerial photography, field work, including specially designed surveys, and published and unpublished census materials. In most cases, base maps were adopted from maps by the Survey of India, because they were the most reliable ones available. As an agency of the central government, the atlas organization could use unpublished information and data from central, state, and local governments. In some instances, the organization designed its own questionnaires to obtain information from state and local governments for its maps. The atlas is a product of twenty-five years of work. Thus the information depicted on some maps is already out of date. Some maps of population were based on the 1951 census, while others used 1961 and 1971 figures. The 1981 census was not used in compiling the atlas. Similarly, place-names that were changed since the first maps appeared in the 1960s were not updated. Maps of economic matters also need to be made current. When revised maps do appear, they can readily be incorporated in the atlas. The current maps will then become references to recent history. The atlas organization plans to add new sheets as time passes. In addition to the general and political maps, Volume I contains a preface, a list of persons who have worked for the organization, and the table of contents for the entire atlas. The sixteen mesoregional administrative maps show six administrative levels with eight categories of populated places and groupings of administrative headquarters. They also show five classes of roads, railroads, rivers, and shaded relief. An administrative map of India and a map of parliamentary constituencies complete Volume I. The general maps of macroregions use a tencolor altitudinal scale and show administrative boundaries, populated places, railroads, roads, rivers, canals, contour intervals, and selected heights. On the back of each general map, all place-names are listed alphabetically and are located by a letter-number grid system. Moreover, a brief description is provided for each macroregion. Physical maps for each mesoregion are in Volume II. The twenty-one-color altitudinal scale for these maps contains some hues that are not easily distinguishable from one another. Identification consequently is a problem, although it is rectified somewhat by numbered contour lines. Maps of climate, drainage, water resources, wildlife, and forests are in Volume III. The climate maps are a combination of full-sheet and four-to-a-sheet layouts. The five-color division is clear and distinctive. Drainage patterns are depicted on macroregional maps. Because the highlighted features include canals, river-valley projects, and drainage basins, the sequence belongs in an agricultural grouping rather than a physical subcategory. Maps of water resources, prepared at the macroregional scale, derive from publications of the Survey of India, the Geological Survey of India, and central and state governments. This map sequence not only includes rainfall histograms of selected stations and isohyets but also shows subsoil brackishness, water-table contours, and thicknesses of aquifers. Again the topics are extremely important to agriculture. The section devoted to biogeography depicts wildlife by macroregions on maps of wetlands and forests. Forest types are shown on five macroregional colored maps with data from the Forest Research Institute. Economic maps portray agricultural, industrial, transportation, and extractive activities. The industrial maps are either on one sheet or four-to-a-sheet. Using data from central and state governmental sources, these maps show cement, engineering, textile, sugar, and handicraft industries. In addition there is a four-to-a-sheet plate illustrating industrial growth from 1921 through 1961. The agricultural maps mostly show countrywide patterns, including a map of crop regions with twenty-seven different combinations of crops that may be too complex for easy understanding. Other maps depict production of individual crops, livestock, distribution, fishery and poultry production, land in cultivation, population density per square kilometer of arable land, and landownership patterns. Finally a plate of agricultural regions shows twenty-six divisions in a cumbersome combination of colors, although a numbered code allows relatively easy identification of the regions. Maps of commercial interaction and transportation are in volumes IV and VI. The transportation and tourist maps are at the mesoregional scale. They show types of airports, railroad gauge, roadways, pilgrim centers, places of worship, rest houses, and locations of other tourist attractions. Some of these maps were printed in the 1960s and are now outdated. Along with maps of railroad accessibility and passenger-traffic and road densities are plates with agricultural markets, types of banking facilities, and volume of insurance transactions by urban unit that demonstrate the innovativeness of the planners of the atlas. Cultural elements are depicted on the two-page format and at both macroregional and mesoregional scales. Maps of the cultural landscape combine features of the agricultural, urban, pastoral, and wild landscape as well as locations of worship places and cave temples by religious sect, hill stations, palaces, forts, ruins, and tombs. Types of villages were classified on macroregional maps according to their patterning: compact, semicompact, hamlet, dispersed, or sparse. ## CRITICISM In addition to the outdatedness of population and economic data that I noted previously, there is a severe gap in the coverage in the atlas: the omission of elements that are necessary to understand Indian development. For example, industrialization, which planners for the central government deem to be a major lever for progress in the country, is very casually mapped in this atlas. There is no macroregional or mesoregional information for selected industrial sectors, and composite industrial-location maps are totally omitted. Although the rapid growth of population has been identified as the principal obstacle to an accelerated rate of per capita income, the atlas does not offer any map showing the successes or failures of family planning. Such a map might have helped population planners to identify the acceptance or rejection of family planning at the regional level. Perhaps the political sensitivity of the issue in the 1970s discouraged the inclusion of maps on the topic. Most of the maps of agricultural production use data that date before the advent of the green revolution and hence do not show the considerable increases in crop production after 1966. There are no maps of the acreage planted with new high-yielding varieties of rice and wheat or of the expanded use of pesticides, fertilizers, and irrigation. Consequently important Indian achievements in agriculture during the past decade and a half are not in the atlas. Levels of economic development were not mapped, although the organization had the capacity to do so. At the regional level such mapping would be helpful for establishing developmental priorities of regional planners and for working to remove disparities in development. In sum, the atlas is an important cartographic and geographical work with a few shortcomings. For geographers in other developing countries the atlas is a symbolic milestone; for the producers of the atlas, it is a mark of excellence. The work deserves a place in major libraries to be available to persons who wish to acquire in-depth knowledge of India or to do research on the multifaceted spatial characteristics of the country. ## REFERENCES $^{1}$ National Atlas of India (8 vols.: Calcutta, National Atlas and Thematic Mapping Organization, 1982). $^{2}$ National Atlas of India, Preliminary Edition (edited by S. P. Chatterjee; Calcutta: National Atlas Organization, 1957) [in Hindi]. $^{3}$ S. P. Chatterjee, Bengal in Maps (Bombay: Orient Longmans, 1949).