Data Methodology

How the record is built

Official publications state the same measure in different shapes, at different vintages, under different names. The work here is making those comparable without changing what any of them said.

Last revised 11 August 2026

Sources

Where the figures come from

The record is built from official publications: ministries and agencies of the Government of India, parliamentary records, and India's submissions to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. A small number of non-government reference publications are held alongside these and are identified as such.

Nothing enters the record from secondary reporting or commentary. Every figure is taken from the document that published it, and that document is recorded against the figure.

Structure

From documents to indicators

A single measure — installed solar capacity, say — may be published by three different bodies, in three different units, at three different dates, under three different names. Read as documents, those are three unrelated statements. They only become a series if something decides they describe the same thing.

That decision is the work. Each figure is mapped to a canonical indicator with a fixed definition, so that everything published about that measure lands in one place and can be read as a sequence rather than a pile.

Units and vintages are recorded exactly as published. Figures are not converted, rounded, restated, or brought onto a house scale — a source that publishes in megawatts stays in megawatts, and the comparison happens at the point of reading rather than by rewriting the record.

Divergence

Where official sources disagree

They frequently do. Two government publications can carry different figures for the same measure on the same date, usually because they are counting different things under the same word.

When that happens, both figures are kept and the divergence is recorded. Neither is suppressed, and neither is quietly picked as the right one. Where the difference turns out to be definitional — a different basis, both correct — that is written down. Where it is not, it stays open until a source resolves it.

This is the part that makes the record useful. A single tidy number would be easier to publish and would tell you less.

Confidence

Two tiers, stated plainly

Source-linked — every figure in the record carries a reference to the publication it came from, and that reference resolves. This is machine-maintained and complete.

Human-confirmed — a figure that a person has read back against the originating publication this cycle. This covers a subset of the record and is expanded source by source.

Source-linked is not the same as confirmed, and the record does not present it as though it were.

Limits

What this does not do

No figure here is generated, estimated, modelled, or inferred. If a publication does not state a number, that number does not enter the record, however sound the arithmetic that would produce it. Sub-national figures are excluded; the record is national.

Coverage follows what has been published and what has been read, so it is uneven by theme and by period, and it will stay uneven. Absence of a figure means it has not been ingested, not that it does not exist.

The record is offered without warranty. Before relying on any figure for a decision, a filing, or a publication, follow its link and read it at the source.

Alignment

Sustainable Development Goals

Indicators carry a linkage to the Sustainable Development Goal targets they speak to, so the record can be read against the 2030 Agenda as well as against India's own stated commitments. The linkage is recorded at the indicator level and travels with the data.