Why We Do This Work

There is a wealth of information about India’s socio-economic realities captured by a range of household surveys and administrative datasets. But the use of these valuable public goods often remains limited to a few technical experts. This restricts the full potential of these numbers and statistics in informing our public discourse and discussions. 

Some of this limited use is likely due to the lack of familiarity with these datasets and the variables they include. Some of it is due to the lack of technical know-how of how to use this data, especially when coding skills become essential to access these. And add to that, there is a growing distrust in numbers given the overwhelming scale of misinformation circulating as data. 

And yet, these public datasets are valuable resources and a public good. Generated by public institutions using publicly-funded resources, they hold extremely valuable information about issues that are intimately associated with people’s lives – standards of living, the world of work, socio-economic justice, human development, food prices, and access to basic resources. We believe that wider access to, use and understanding of these datasets can help strengthen our collective understanding of these issues as also that of our public datasets and statistics. 

Who We Are

Team CEDA is a collective of academics, researchers, developers, programmers and designers, all of whom share an interest in working with data. We are attached to the Economics department at Ashoka University, a privilege that allows us access to some of the best experts, advisors and mentors in the field.

Along with full-time team members, we work with students, alumni and short-term consultants, and our work is a collective labour of this wide community of data lovers and experts.