India unclear how many villages it has, and why that matters

USING A MASTER GEOGRAPHY CURTAILS MISMATCHES SIGNIFICANTLY SocialCops, a New Delhi-based data intelligence company that works with different government departments, has created a geography

standardisation tool as part of its platform that reconciles the anomalies in different geographies occurring in government datasets. The aim is to develop a composite master database so

that datasets for education, demographics, livelihood, health, and so on, that currently exist in silos can correspond with and talk to each other. An example from a case study will help

explain how a data mismatch because of confusing names can be tackled. The Census identifies a sub-district in Nashik, Maharashtra, as “Yevla”. However, some of the government information

systems that SocialCops has worked with, including the Nashik district administration, use the name “Yeola” for the sub-district. Further, this sub-district is easily confused with another

sub-district called Deola, also in Nashik. As a result, Yeola tends to get replaced with Deola, given it is the closest match, and therefore all data that are collected for the former get

reported for Deola. However, through the standardisation tool that automatically replaces Yeola with Yevla, it is possible to correct inaccuracies from creeping into the datasets. The

geography standardisation tool also helps to correctly match one dataset against another, creating a database of geographies across sectors and across time periods. The system is intelligent

enough to know, for example, that Panchsheel Nagar was created out of Ghaziabad district in 2011, and was renamed to Hapur in 2012. Therefore, the datasets will be able to match Hapur with

Ghaziabad district from 2012 onwards. _(Verma is a Resident Entrepreneur and currently leads the Research & Analysis team at __SocialCops__, a New Delhi-based data intelligence company

that works with different government departments.)_ _(This article was orginally published in __IndiaSpend __and has been republished with permission. Indiaspend.org is a data-driven,

public-interest journalism non-profit/FactChecker.in is fact-checking initiative, scrutinising for veracity and context statements made by individuals and organisations in public life.)_