How we make these reports
The method behind the Reports section — published so you can check our work, or do your own. Everything here is CC-BY-SA: take it, use it, improve it.
Why we do this
India publishes an enormous amount of official data — on corporate social spending, schools, health, poverty. Most of it is never read. Inside those spreadsheets are facts that change decisions: where the money actually goes, who it misses, and what a committee could fix this session. We read the data, check what we find, and publish it in plain language while the decision is still open. That is the whole idea.
The five moves
1 · Frame — start only when it matters now
We only pick a dataset when somebody is about to make a decision about it: a Bill in committee, a rule being drafted, a budget being set. Analysis with no decision attached is filing, not contributing. Before we touch the data we write down the plan and the question: what would this change, for whom, this week — in six months — in five years — by 2047?
2 · Analyse — find the one honest number
We look at the shape of the data first: where it piles up, which way it is moving, and where it contradicts itself. Government portals sometimes disagree with their own reports; when they do, that is a finding and we say so. Then we set the spending against a measure of need — poverty, population, learning — and build one number that carries the story. In the CSR series that number is ₹61 against ₹64,308: what a poor person draws in corporate social spending in Bihar, against what one draws in Goa.
3 · Verify — before anything publishes
Every headline figure is worked out a second time from the source files, on its own, and checked against what other people have reported. Where our number matches the press, we say so. Where there is nothing to check it against, we say that too. Every report names its own weak points — how old the data is, what stands in for what, what was left out — in the report itself, not in a footnote elsewhere. Work that hides its limits is not a contribution.
4 · Deliver — one finding, many doors
The same checked finding leaves here in five forms, each built from the one before: a full report for people who want the whole argument · a data deep-dive for people who want to check the maths · a dashboard for people who think in charts · a short opinion piece for the public conversation · a two-page brief for the committee that can act on it. All five are on the reports page. They are one piece of analysis, written five ways for five kinds of reader.
5 · Publish — open by default
Everything lands here under CC-BY-SA, with its sources linked and its method in plain sight. The short version goes to social media, the argument goes to opinion pages, and the committee gets a formal submission. The decisions that matter — what to send, when, and to whom — are made by a person, never by an automation.
The rules we hold ourselves to
- Something has to be decidable, or we do not start. The work has to be able to change something.
- One honest number beats forty tables. If the finding cannot survive being said in one sentence, it is not ready.
- Check before publishing. Worked out again, checked against other sources, and the caveats named in the thing itself.
- Faults are findings. When official data contradicts itself we report that too — plainly, precisely, and with the fix.
- Open by default. CC-BY-SA, sources linked, method public — including this page.
- People make the marks. AI helps us read and build. People decide what gets claimed and what gets sent.
Do it yourself
The datasets are public: csr.gov.in, data.gov.in, NITI Aayog's dashboards, UDISE+, NFHS. The method is this page. If you run it on something we have not touched — a district, a sector, a scheme — we would like to see what you find, and we will link to any work that shows its sources and its limits. Write to us.
Reference run: the CSR series above — from raw portal exports to a parliamentary submission. First published July 2026.