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.
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 →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 →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 →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.
