How to Get Facts & Figures For An Election Digital Campaign

In continuation of the series, “Building a Political Digital Campaign team in India“, this post will focus on the websites the team needs to refer to get authentic government data. The visualization of data becomes very important in an election campaign, be it print, TV or digital. A high-quality infographic conveys a lot of messages.

Given a topic, there is a team that hunts for data, I call them hunters. There is a lot of raw data that comes from this team. It has to be cleaned up, and organized before you try to make sense of it. Another team could do this, I call them farmers. Then you have the visualizers of this data, the marketers.

I had earlier written about the lack of government data being available in the public domain in India, at least, I haven’t found anything on the lines of USAFacts.org. There is a significant opportunity to build one in India on the lines of USAFacts.org.

During election time, the teams need to be very quick in collating data which needs to be used for offence and defence. Ideally, you should have a bank of infographics ready, anticipating the questions that will arise or you will need to ask.

You should also access fake news busters regularly, which could come in handy.

Government Data Sites in India

1. MyGov.in
2. Data.gov.in is intended to be used by Government of India Ministries/ Departments their organizations to publish datasets, documents, services, tools and applications collected by them for public use. The directory of Chief Data Officers of various ministries is available here.
3. Bureau of Police Research and Development: For processing statistical data related to crimes.
4. Census Commissioner of India
5. Central Bureau of Health Intelligence: For health-related data
6. National Crime Records Bureau
7. Reserve Bank of India
8. Ministry of Finance: Lots of data and statistics related to the economy.
9. Finance Commission of India
10. Global Data Lab: Data related to wealth, poverty and assets.
11. Ministry of Road Transport: For data related to roads laid.
12. Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation: Plenty of public documents and downloadable data.
13. National Family Health Survey of India: India’s demographic and health policies and programmes
14. National Institution for Transforming India (NITI Aayog): Lots of statistics for each state.
15. Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative: For data related to poverty
16. Planning Commission of India: For data before 2014, the previous avatar of NITI Aayog.
17. Press Information Bureau: All Press Releases of various ministries is released on this site. If you use advanced Google search properly you can get a lot of authentic data from here.
18. Public Affairs Centre: The Institute publishes Citizen Report Cards, research studies to improve public services – as well as for its work on electoral transparency, public works quality monitoring tools.
19. United Nations Development Program

Non-Government Data Sites in India

These sites are a good starting point for you to have an understanding of the underlying data. Few of these sites could have a political leaning, due to which they may not show you the entire picture.

1. Factly: Making Public Data Meaningful
2. How India Lives: aims to organise a massive amount of public data on India and make it available in a searchable, comparable and visual format.
3. IndiaSpend: India’s first data journalism initiative.
4. IndiaStat: India’s most comprehensive e-resource for socio-economic statistical data
5. SocialCops: On a mission to confront the world’s most critical problems through data intelligence.

Other posts in this series are,

• Background of a Content Team Member
• Books, Blogs, and Courses To Prepare For An Election Digital Campaign
• Elections Market Survey & Digital Campaign Providers in India
• How to exploit the potential of Indian Languages in an Election Digital Campaign