VizChitra 2025

The last ten years have seen a dramatic improvement in access to Indian data, allowing journalists to tell richer stories, analysts to get a better sense of Indian realities, and designers to have much more to work with. Improvements are now happening faster than ever, more so with the adoption of machine learning and large language models. How do we use this moment to do better than we had imagined? By asking the important questions.

We talk too little about what goes into the making of data, who has access to information and who doesn’t, and who is able to work with it or make sense of it and not, and how we are using this data and to what end. In this talk, I hope to share some data that grounds my insights, and encourage us to engage with these questions.

This talk is for producers, users and observers of data - those who would like to think more deeply about the data that we use to visualise. Having been a data journalist, data editor and now the founder of a platform dedicated to expand not just access but the understanding of data, I have done some years of both work and thinking on this, and feel happily placed to share these thoughts. As a member of this community, I’m also happy to be part of a process of questioning that takes us to greater self-awareness and a place where we can all do better.

Rukmini S, Founder & Director, Data for India