#29 Behind the Dashboard: Unpacking India’s Data-Driven Governance
Welcome to the 29th edition of Policy Mandala by India House. This week, we explore different dashboards in India and if they are guiding better policy decisions. Enjoy reading!
Imagine you’re back in Class 8, nervously opening your report card. Maths? A proud A. History? A humbling C. That single sheet doesn’t just show how you did—it tells you where to double down and where to breathe easily. It’s part celebration, part course correction.
Now zoom out from the classroom to the country. Think of India’s digital dashboards as its report cards—only these update daily, weekly, even minute by minute. Every single minute, someone is punching in new data on schools, toilets, roads, or rainfall.
These dashboards turn raw numbers into charts, graphs, and map-based infographics. No more dusty files or long meetings to figure out what’s going on. The right data is just a few clicks away.
Picture a district collector in Chhattisgarh checking today’s toilet construction under Swachh Bharat or reviewing water pipe-laying under Jal Jeevan Mission—all on a screen, in real time.
The idea is simple: use data to drive decisions. Just like your report card helped your parents decide if you needed a tutor or a treat, dashboards help officials decide where to deploy funds, send staff, or celebrate success.
Dashboards typically serve three goals: they make progress visible (a village lighting up on a map as it gets electricity), they aggregate scattered data, and they track specific objectives—reducing malnutrition, improving learning, increasing access to clean water.
Some dashboards, like the Aspirational Districts one, are internal. Others, like Swachh Bharat’s, are public.
But here’s the real question: Are dashboards truly guiding better decisions—or are they just showcasing selective or irrelevant data?
India’s dashboard journey began with PMES in the early 2000s and picked up after 2014 with Ujala, electrification, and Swachh Bharat—each tracked in real time.
Then came the mega-dashboard moment: the Aspirational Districts Programme, launched by NITI Aayog in 2018. It focused on 112 lagging districts, tracking indicators from health to education to basic infrastructure.
By 2023, NITI Aayog was managing over 45 dashboards—yes, forty-five—each trying to bring some order to India’s famously chaotic data landscape.
In this edition of Policy Mandala, we’re going to uncover the magic of dashboards—how they shape policy decisions, where they shine, and where they seriously need a software upgrade.
Let’s now dive into the dashboards themselves—the good, the great, and the ones still buffering.
The first real poster child of dashboard-based governance was the GARV Dashboard, launched in 2014 under the Deen Dayal Upadhyaya Gram Jyoti Yojana. Its job? Track rural electrification. Every new pole or power line installed had to be geo-tagged with photographs. This meant ground staff couldn’t just say a village was electrified—they had to show it.
Thanks to daily updates and GPS-enabled uploads, officials had real-time visibility. By 2018, nearly all villages were electrified. As Economic Times put it: “Every pole was verified, ensuring transparency.” Of course, early on, poor internet connectivity in remote areas caused a few hiccups. But overall, GARV proved that with the right design, data could genuinely drive delivery.
From electricity to nutrition—the Poshan Tracker, launched under the Poshan Abhiyaan, monitors child malnutrition. Anganwadi workers use a mobile app to record children’s height, weight, and overall nutritional status every month. It also links to the SDG Dashboard and Aspirational Districts Dashboard, offering a harmonised view of ground-level implementation.
It has shown results. In 2020, it flagged rising malnutrition in Maharashtra’s Palghar district. That alert led to emergency food interventions. A DataDENT report even called it a “game-changer.” But field workers often face pressure to report improved trends, creating a risk of overly optimistic data. When dashboards reflect ambition instead of reality, the feedback loop breaks down.
The Aspirational Districts Dashboard, launched in 2018 by NITI Aayog, tracks 112 underperforming districts across themes like health, education, and infrastructure. It’s a bit like a leaderboard for governance—districts are ranked and nudged to improve through healthy competition.
Take Jharkhand, which saw a surge in school enrolments after a low ranking triggered focused intervention in 2019. As NITI Aayog’s Supreet Kaur said, “It fosters collaboration.” But rural internet gaps often delay updates, meaning dashboards might display outdated information—leading to poor decision-making despite good intentions.
Next, in education, the UDISE+ Dashboard (Unified District Information System for Education) tracks metrics like enrollment, facilities, and infrastructure. In 2021, it identified major sanitation gaps in UP schools, unlocking targeted funding for toilet construction.
However, officials in some districts have admitted that schools often inflate enrollment data to qualify for additional schemes. This distortion, driven by the pressure to perform, compromises the very purpose of the dashboard: honest visibility.
Now let’s zoom out to the SDG India Index Dashboard, created by NITI Aayog to track how states perform against the 17 Sustainable Development Goals. India’s overall score improved from 57 in 2018 to 71 in 2023–24. States like Tamil Nadu made significant progress on maternal health indicators and institutional deliveries. Similarly, Odisha’s focused efforts on sustainable livelihoods and forest regeneration contributed to improved SDG scores.
The dashboard has earned international recognition for its design and interactivity. But many local officials find the indicators too abstract or jargon-heavy. Simplifying the interface and guidance could unlock far more grassroots engagement.
On to water—the Jal Jeevan Mission Dashboard tracks piped water access in rural homes. By 2023, it reported that over 12 crore households had been connected. This visibility helped states like Uttar Pradesh ramp up pipeline projects in 2022. A ministry official called it “transformative.”
Yet, one core problem persists: data entry is not linked to on-ground validation. Unlike the Swachh Bharat Mission, which used geo-tagged photos from villages to track toilet construction, Jal Jeevan relies heavily on aggregated reporting. A more transparent system—village-level entries paired with GIS-tagged images—could ensure the taps on the dashboard match the taps on the ground.
Finally, the Composite Water Management Index (CWMI) dashboard evaluates state-level performance on water conservation, efficiency, and restoration. In 2019, Gujarat’s high scores on groundwater recharge and policy innovation nudged Rajasthan to adopt similar practices.
Here, dashboards have done more than monitor—they’ve enabled “competitive, cooperative federalism” in action. States borrow successful practices from one another, not just under pressure, but out of pride. The only drawback? Annual updates. For something as urgent as drought management, that’s simply too slow. Quicker, seasonal reporting could help states respond with the urgency water issues demand.
Across dashboards spanning electricity, nutrition, education, water, and development, a few clear patterns stand out. When built with real-time data capture, easy-to-read visuals, and strong last-mile accountability—like GARV or Jal Jeevan Mission—dashboards can transform governance. But when the data is delayed, inflated, or disconnected from ground reality—as in parts of UDISE+ or Poshan Tracker—they risk becoming glossy façades. The real power of dashboards lies in their ability to fuel competitive federalism—where states compete to climb leaderboards—and foster collaborative learning, where one district’s innovation becomes another’s model. To truly deliver, dashboards must shift from simply tracking activities to building transparency, triggering timely action, and enabling course correction.
Yet, several challenges persist. The pressure to “look good” often leads to data manipulation—fake entries in water pipeline connections under Jal Jeevan Mission, inflated school enrollments in UDISE+. Connectivity gaps delay updates, and in dashboards like Poshan
Tracker delays or skewed inputs can misrepresent ground realities. Oversimplification is another risk. For instance, Poshan Tracker once showed “low malnutrition” in Katihar, Bihar—even as hunger persisted due to poverty. The problem wasn’t lack of data, but the need for more granular insights. Village- or block-level data might have told a very different story. Without such depth, dashboards can miss what truly matters.
Now imagine an India where dashboards are not just digital displays, but the pulse of governance. Every piped-water connection under the Jal Jeevan Mission is geo-tagged and photo-verified, curbing data fudging and reducing the need for tedious follow-ups. Real-time data flows in from remote corners, thanks to offline-enabled devices that sync automatically once connectivity returns.
A health worker in rural Bihar logs accurate malnutrition data into Poshan Tracker. The system triggers nutritional support and maps the data alongside poverty indicators—enabling targeted welfare. A school in Uttar Pradesh enters enrollment figures into UDISE+, unlocking funds for toilets and classrooms—no middlemen involved. In Rajasthan, a dashboard confirms clean water access instantly.
Citizens are part of this data revolution too. Dashboards are available via panchayat kiosks or mobile apps, with features to flag incorrect data—whether unbuilt toilets or ghost enrollments. Officials use intuitive tools like the SDG India Index to set priorities, compare outcomes, and learn from others—fostering both competition and collaboration.
How do we make this vision a reality?
Start with verified, source-level data—using GIS-tagged photos. Enable offline-online syncs and train more data collectors, not just add devices. Create more citizen-facing dashboards that invite feedback. And integrate qualitative inputs—field observations, real stories, community voices.
Dashboards can transform governance—but only if treated as tools for service, not spectacle. India needs dashboards that are smart, sensitive, and rooted in local realities—designed for course correction, not just celebration. Only then can data truly drive better decisions, and digital governance become meaningful in both form and function.
Book Mandala
In this section, we suggest a book to be read/listened to each week, for the inner policy enthusiast in you :)
Book: Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition have Failed
Author: James Scott
About the Book:
Why do well-intentioned policies often fail? James C. Scott’s Seeing Like a State takes us deep into the logic of bureaucratic governance—and how it can go awry when it tries to impose order on the messy realities of human life. From Soviet collectivization to modernist city planning, Scott explores how large-scale planning projects—despite how noble in intent—often crumble because they ignore the lived experiences, local knowledge, and adaptive practices of real communities.
Using rich historical examples and a sharp interdisciplinary lens, Scott shows how states "see" societies not as complex human ecosystems but as simplified grids—leading to unintended consequences, inefficiencies, and at times, disaster.
Our Take:
Scott doesn’t just critique state planning; he lays bare the why behind the failures, drawing attention to the blindness that can come from too much faith in rational design.
We loved how the book balances philosophical depth with practical insight. It’s as much about power and vision as it is about rice farming in Tanzania or city blocks in Brasília. At its core, it reminds policymakers to stay humble—and to trust the wisdom embedded in lived, local realities.
If you’ve ever wondered why grand plans on paper fall apart in the field, Seeing Like a State will change the way you think about governance altogether.
Co-authored by Meenakshi Singh and Aswathi Prakash
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