Business

The Keys To The State

Where do you go to find relevant government data? Private players throw the door open.

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The Keys To The State
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Recent Data Spats

  • GoI revises consumption growth rates for April-June 2010 after economists point out that demand has not been properly captured.
  • India tries to settle figures on just how many people are below the poverty line. Multiple reports say between 25-50% of population.
  • Heated debate around a RGICS report that gave Gujarat a high score. It only considered economic and industrial performance.
  • Indicus’s analysis that showed a rise in per capita income in Bihar was attacked on grounds that published data was not from known sources.
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When Prithvi Haldea, MBA by training and corporate executive for two decades, started his own venture in 1989—a database on the primary capital market—he didn’t know the risks involved would eventually include his life. Haldea’s other database, the one that gets him into trouble, is an online listing of “rogue” companies and their executives. It features some 34,000 individuals and 77,000 companies indicted by regulators and courts for breaking various laws. “I get death threats regularly,” he says, “even though everything I publish there is public information. I only put the people, the companies and the orders indicting them in one place, and, yes, in simple English.” Haldea’s website, incidentally, is supported by the government.

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On the other hand, Ameya Sathaye only had to deal with indifference. For 10 years, Sathaye has run www.sarkaritel.com from his office-cum-residence in Delhi’s Mayur Vihar. He has two employees. One uploads the telephone numbers Sathaye gathers from government departments. The other accompanies him on “field visits”—trips to government offices in search of phone numbers. It took Sathaye years to convince officials that what he was doing—creating a free-to-use directory of state employees—was useful. It took 18 months to gather the first lists the website launched with.

Things have changed since then. When the Maharashtra cabinet was reshuffled last year, Sathaye claims he had the changes up within 24 hours; the state’s own website didn’t do so for three months. “I have visited 15 countries and whenever I’ve exchanged visiting cards with Indian officials abroad, they’ve recognised my site,” says Sathaye. And to think that back in 2000, when he was struggling to launch the directory, he was often turned away at government buildings.

The likes of Haldea and Sathaye represent a clutch of private stat gurus who feed the enormous hunger for information by plugging into networks of government departments, PSU executives or independent researchers who have easier access to raw data. For anyone not interested in filing RTI applications, a private database company is the easiest way to plug into India. Even the government, the source of all this data, is often a subscriber for these stats, buying it right back from private companies.

The market is an obvious one: foreign and domestic investors, research agencies, universities, analysts and development agencies clamour for information on how much to invest, where and how. On whether the rural market is doing as well as the news reports proclaim, or on whether there could be a bigger market for, say, shampoo, in smaller towns. These private organisers of data have filled up the information gap by taking over the job of a state that has barely kept up. While most people seem happy with this arrangement, it has also led to controversies on the interpretation of data.

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Some companies provide the data for free. For others, the price covers the effort it takes to access and collate official public records. Other times, databases break dense officialese into digestible parts. But mostly, the fee covers the much bigger price of returning disappointed from understocked official data counters. Sathaye admits that all the information on his site is available, free, on the government departments’ websites as well. He’s just a “central source”, he says, “after all, many departments still don’t update their own directories before many days...sometimes a month”. Government officials use Sathaye’s website regularly to search for colleagues in other departments. In fact, his biggest advertisers are 40 state-run companies.

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Getting hold of official statistics is less difficult now than a decade ago. But it’s still not easy. Noted demographer Dr Ashish Bose, who headed the population research centre at the Institute of Economic Growth, says, “I was looking for some data on population, and I knew the website of the Registrar General of India had it. But the site was under maintenance for days together. Finally, I asked my assistant, who got it in no time from one of the private sources.”

IndiaStat.com, an online subscription-based database of nearly any official statistic on India, from the administrative set-up to banking, housing, crime, industry, labour and sports (including the Commonwealth Games), is one such source of official statistics. As a young economist in Uttar Pradesh during the 1980s, Dr R.K. Thukral, who runs the site, published some of the earliest statistical ‘handbooks’ on the state. The internet gave him a chance at entrepreneurship; he moved his interest in numbers online. “I’m trying to collect data on India from independence to now,” says Thukral. “But it’s very difficult.” Most of this information will go into the new websites he is planning, one, a socio-economic profile of India, another dedicated to the Constitution, and urban and local governance.

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But even Dr Thukral, with his years of experience, sees challenges ahead. A small instance—India uses EVMs, but booth-level data on voting patterns is not freely available, except with the leaders of a parliamentary constituency. Still, things are not all bad. Last time he looked, the President of India’s office was a subscriber to his database, as is the Planning Commission and several state governments. Recently, the Congress Working Committee has become a member. “We’ve had no complaints yet—all the data we provide is official statistics, all of it. Though we do add value by simplifying raw statistics into tables and charts that can be used by different users,” says Thukral. He has 51 employees running the show, including field staff in major cities. “You could say that the government is our competitor,” he says.

The government, on its part, says once it releases data into the public domain, it can’t really control who uses it. Pronab Sen, ex-secretary, statistics and programme implementation, who recently joined the Planning Commission as advisor, says, “As long as the data is not tampered with, and then said to be the official version, there’s nothing wrong with private firms distributing or reselling it. They often add value, or help in interpreting data, which the state can’t do...but interpretation cannot be free of ideology.”

At times, though, government data is ‘interpreted’ by the private sector in a user-friendly way. This interpretation isn’t risk-free, says Jatin Singh, who runs SkyMet, a weather report-and-forecast business, out of Noida. “In fact, it’s riskier,” he says. SkyMet uses the Indian Met department’s data, which is public, and employs a handful of ex-IAF officers, who offer prediction services to TV channels, publications, and telecom, oil and aviation firms. “The Met department does the same, I just narrow down the forecast. But if I get it wrong, I don’t get paid. That’s the risk I take,” says Jatin.

Percentage Players

Non-state players who are crunching numbers with state data

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Set up in 2004 by Prithvi Haldea, online listing of “rogue” companies and their executives
Employees: 35
Subscribers: Site is free to access by all
Wishlist: That the UID gets under way, allowing a clear listing of names

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Set up in 1999 by Ameya Sathaye, this is a free-to-use directory of government employees
Employees: 2, plus a few stringers
Subscribers: Site is free-to-access by all
Wishlist: Listings of block, village data
 

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Started in 1999 by R.K. Thukral, online subscription-based database of official statistics of India
Employees: 50 approx
Subscribers: GoI agencies, political parties, research groups.
Wishlist: All demographic data since 1947
 

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SkyMet

Set up by Jatin Singh in 2003, weather report-and-forecast business out of Noida
Employees: 40 approx
Subscribers: Telecom, aviation companies, research bodies
Wishlist: That all the Met Dept weather sensors actually start working

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Indicus Analytics

Started in 2000 by Laveesh Bhandari, it’s an economic research firm that produces economic, consumer data products
Subscribers: National and international corporate bodies, industry associations, governments, academia, media houses

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CMIE

Started in 1976 by Mahesh Vyas, subscription-based database of Indian companies, economy and finance. Conducts research and produces database products.
Employees: 330 approx
Subscribers: Thousands of organisations in India and overseas

But it isn’t just that—the risk in putting out information is also that you may upset someone, whether or not it is political (such as GDP data that the government recently revised under pressure). “We do have problems with private agencies from time to time, especially when sources aren’t reported properly,” says T.C.A. Anant, India’s chief statistician. “There’s not much we can do about it...the government can’t cater to everyone’s information needs individually. It’s also for buyers of data to be wary,” he says. Still, what’s deeply ironic is that the government agencies buy back, at times, their own data. Dr Bose offers everyone a way out: “It’s ridiculous that government data should be finding its way back into government via private agencies.” He suggests that the government make out a simple list of which department is responsible for releasing what data.

Though, who knows, this could take years—unless outsourced.

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