Charts about the things we teach, built from public data.
Some we made ourselves from named datasets. Some are diagrams of the ideas we use at work. A few are famous old charts we rebuilt in code to see how they were made, and there's a shelf of newer work by other people worth your time.
Each chart is drawn in your browser from a named dataset, with the source printed underneath so you can check it.
India passed China to become the world's most populous country in 2023. Look further out and the order keeps shifting — the UN projects Nigeria to climb past the United States by 2050.
Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024 — country population ranks, 1990–2050 (2050 projected).
Explore this chart →Richer countries tend to live longer — but the link bends. India and Bangladesh reach lives nearly as long as far richer places, while Nigeria and Ethiopia sit low on both. Each bubble is a country, sized by population and coloured by region.
Source: World Bank Open Data, 2022 — GDP per capita (PPP), life expectancy and population, pulled from the World Bank API.
Explore this chart →India's rain doesn't spread across the year — it arrives in a burst. About three-quarters of it falls in the four monsoon months, June to September.
Source: India Meteorological Department — normal (long-period average) monthly rainfall, all-India. Figures approximate.
Explore this chart →Women have caught up with men in college enrolment, and slightly passed them; the literacy gap is narrowing. In paid work and in Parliament, they are still far behind.
Sources: NFHS-5 (literacy), AISHE 2021–22 (college GER), PLFS 2023–24 (labour force), Lok Sabha 2024 (seats).
Explore this chart →A Scheduled Tribe household is about three times as likely to be poor as an "Other" household. National poverty has fallen since (24.8% to 15.0% by NFHS-5), but the gap between groups holds.
Source: NITI Aayog National MPI. By social group: NFHS-4 (2015–16). National headcount fell from 24.85% to 14.96% by NFHS-5 (2019–21).
Explore this chart →The richest 1% of Indians own about 40% of the country's wealth — the highest concentration on record. The bottom half own roughly 6%. The same 1% also take 22.6% of all income. Inspired by PerThirtySix's American Wealth Inequality.
Source: World Inequality Lab — Bharti, Chancel, Piketty & Somanchi, Income and Wealth Inequality in India, 1922–2023 (2024). Shares for 2022–23.
Explore this chart →Each dot is a country. Most emit little, and India sits near the bottom. The average person in Qatar emits more than 20 times what the average Indian does.
Source: EDGAR (European Commission / JRC) — territorial CO₂ emissions per capita, 2023.
Explore this chart →About three-quarters of India's electricity still comes from coal. Solar and wind are growing — together about 12% — but the shift is early.
Source: Ember / Central Electricity Authority — share of electricity generation, 2024. Figures rounded.
Explore this chart →Across three national surveys, services improved a lot: institutional births, immunisation and women's bank accounts all rose. The bottom row barely moves — by NFHS-5, anaemia among women is slightly worse.
Source: National Family Health Survey rounds 3 (2005–06), 4 (2015–16) and 5 (2019–21). Each cell is the share with the positive outcome.
Explore this chart →The dot is the IPCC's best estimate; the bar is its "very likely" range. Only the lowest-emission paths stay near the 1.5°C and 2°C limits; the higher ones pass them comfortably.
Source: IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (AR6, WG1, 2021) — projected global surface warming by 2081–2100 vs 1850–1900, best estimate and very likely range, by scenario.
Explore this chart →Eight very different countries, one shared scale. Under-five deaths fell almost everywhere over thirty years — even Rwanda, after its 1994 spike.
Source: UN IGME / World Bank (SH.DYN.MORT), pulled from the World Bank API.
Explore this chart →Each line is a country's path from many children and short lives toward few children and long lives — the demographic transition, just at different times.
Source: World Bank — fertility rate and life expectancy, 1960–2022.
Explore this chart →People move in every direction between regions, not just South to North. The single biggest cross-region pull is into Northern America.
Source: UN DESA International Migrant Stock 2020 — between-region flows (regional aggregates, approximate).
Explore this chart →Most of humanity is in Asia and the middle-income bands. High income is a thin slice, concentrated in a few regions.
Source: World Bank — population by region and income classification, 2023 (cross-tab approximate).
Explore this chart →Energy dominates and is almost all CO₂; agriculture is the big source of methane and nitrous oxide.
Source: India's Fourth Biennial Update Report (BUR4, 2020), excl. land use. Sector × gas split approximate.
Explore this chart →The fuller picture: sector → sub-sector → gas. Power and industry are the CO₂ engine; livestock and rice make most of the methane.
Source: India's Fourth Biennial Update Report (BUR4, 2020), excl. land use. Sub-sector split approximate.
Explore this chart →Almost everyone has electricity, but far fewer have clean cooking fuel, the internet, or health cover.
Source: NFHS-5 (2019–21); Global Findex 2021 (bank accounts).
Explore this chart →Asia is still most populous, but Africa is the fastest-growing band — the world's centre of gravity is moving.
Source: World Bank — population by region, 1960–2023.
Explore this chart →In 1990 India was young — a wide base of children. By 2050 the bulge moves up: far fewer kids, many more older adults.
Source: UN World Population Prospects 2024, by 5-year age band and sex.
Explore this chart →Female literacy is highest in the south and north-east, lowest across the northern belt — Kerala 92%, Rajasthan and Bihar barely half.
Source: Census of India 2011 — female literacy by state.
Explore this chart →Over one generation, the share of people living in extreme poverty fell from about 38% to under 9% — roughly 1.9 billion people down to 660 million.
Source: World Bank Poverty & Inequality Platform, via Our World in Data. Poverty line $2.15/day (2017 PPP).
Explore this chart →Under-five deaths in India fell from 127 to about 30 per 1,000 live births. A child today is roughly four times more likely to reach age five than one born in 1990.
Source: UN Inter-agency Group for Child Mortality Estimation / World Bank Open Data (SH.DYN.MORT), 2024.
Explore this chart →After years of decline, women's recorded workforce participation has risen sharply. Much of the rise is unpaid family work and self-employment, not salaried jobs.
Source: Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), MoSPI. Female LFPR, usual status, age 15+.
Explore this chart →The gender gap in school enrolment is mostly closed; girls' primary enrolment even tops 100%. But enrolment drops at every stage, and only about 1 in 4 young women reaches higher education.
Source: UDISE+ 2021–22 (school) and AISHE 2021–22 (higher education). Female gross enrolment ratio (GER) by level.
Explore this chart →2024 was India's warmest year since 1901. Ten of the fifteen warmest years have come since 2010. How big the number looks depends on the baseline you pick.
Source: India Meteorological Department high-resolution gridded data (1901–2024), via Data for India. The warming band is schematic of the documented trend, not per-year values.
Explore this chart →A child born in India in 1960 could expect to live to about 45. By 2019 that had climbed to nearly 71 — a full human generation added in six decades.
Source: World Bank Open Data — life expectancy at birth, India (SP.DYN.LE00.IN), 1960–2019.
Explore this chart →India's installed solar capacity has grown more than thirty-fold in a decade — from under 3 GW in 2014 to about 87 GW in 2024.
Source: Ministry of New & Renewable Energy (MNRE), installed grid-connected solar capacity, 2014–2024 (approximate).
Explore this chart →In 1960 fewer than one in five Indians lived in a town or city. By 2023 it was more than one in three — and the crossover to a majority-urban India is now in sight.
Source: World Bank — urban population as a share of total, India (SP.URB.TOTL.IN.ZS), 1960–2023.
Explore this chart →Services now make up over half of everything India produces. Yet agriculture, at under a fifth of output, still employs the largest share of workers — the gap at the heart of the jobs debate.
Source: MoSPI / National Accounts — gross value added by broad sector, 2023–24 (approximate shares).
Explore this chart →The national average hides a wide spread. Kerala is near universal literacy at 96%, while Bihar sits around 62% — the same country, a generation apart in schooling.
Source: NSO Household Social Consumption / Periodic Labour Force Survey estimates, 2022–23 (adult literacy, approximate).
Explore this chart →Women hold about 14% of seats in India's Lok Sabha — below the world average of 27%, and a fraction of the share in Rwanda (61%). The Women's Reservation Act, once in force, would lift it toward a third.
Source: Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), women in the lower/single house, 2024 (%).
Explore this chart →Same numbers, two y-axes. Start a bar chart anywhere but zero and you can invent a trend or hide one. Every chart here starts at zero.
Principle: Tufte's "lie factor". A graphic should not say more, or less, than the data.
Numbers tell you what happened. These are some of the models we use to ask why, and what to do next.
Not all "participation" is equal. Sherry Arnstein's 1969 ladder climbs from token consultation to genuine citizen power — a staple of our governance and MEL teaching.
Every theory of change runs from inputs to impact. The hardest gap to cross — and to prove — is the one between what a programme produces and the change in people's lives.
A reinforcing loop: low income starves savings and investment, which holds down productivity, which holds down income. Breaking any one link is the work of development.
Disadvantage compounds. Gender, caste and class are not separate problems to add up — they intersect, and the overlap is where the deepest exclusion sits.
The events we react to sit above the waterline; the patterns, structures and mental models that produce them sit below. Lasting change works underwater.
Every chart here was made with a browser and a public dataset. Pick a dataset, pick a frame, and try it yourself.
A chart is only as good as its source. Here is the dataset behind each one.
Inspired by VizChitra, India's data-visualization community.
