Bhu Naksha Kerala, e-Rekha and the New Maps

Use the screen for what screens do best: orientation before travel. Whether the plot touches the road it is priced for, how it sits against neighbours and water, whether its shape can hold the house being imagined, all of it is checkable from a desk wherever the viewer's coverage includes the village.

Kerala adds a wrinkle other states lack: two generations of survey may describe the same ground. A deed quoting the old survey number, a record carrying the resurvey number, and sketches from both eras can all be true at once. The correspondence between old and new numbering, issued through the village office, is the document that keeps the eras from arguing.

Authority runs by freshness. Where a village has been resurveyed, the resurvey sketch is the geometry of record; where it has not, the archived survey sketch from e-Rekha holds; and on the ground, for any line about to carry money or a wall, a licensed demarcation from the survey records is the only answer that binds.

Screen first, records second, ground last.

Desk method

On and after the visit

Three sources, one hierarchy.

Kerala map work snags in four places.

Kerala plots are small, boundaries are close, and a metre matters more here than an acre does elsewhere.