Treatise on Urban Mapping is a two–volume account of India’s urban planning failures and the practical path forward, written from inside the system by a planner who spent over six decades solving exactly this problem. Volume I, Retrospect, spans 18 chapters and 601 pages, tracing why most Indian cities still lack valid Master Plans by treating the Base Map—the ground truth every plan depends on—as an afterthought rather than a continuously maintained asset. Volume II, Prospects, spans 5 chapters and 229 pages, and lays out an institutional blueprint for fixing this, including a proposed Survey and Mapping Division within each state’s Town and Country Planning department. The book draws on real project data, including the 42-city mapping programme under the Karnataka Municipal Reforms Project, and compares outdated satellite-based methods with modern LiDAR and Aerial Photography standards. It includes 102 maps accessible via QR code, along with a unique QR code providing editable templates in native formats such as “dwg” and “xls”, so planners, students and administrators can apply the methods directly to their own cities. Priced at Rs.900, it is a working reference for anyone responsible for how Indian cities grow.