Hello and welcome to The Moving Curve. I’m Rukmini, a data journalist based in Chennai. Two nights a week on this mini-cast, I consider one question around the novel coronavirus epidemic in India. Tonight I’m considering this question — how can district-level data help in strengthening democracy?
As I mentioned in the last episode, in this episode too I am going to be talking to an incredible guest about India’s data deficits going into the pandemic, and how to fix them. Prof. S. V. Subramanian is a Professor of Population Health and Geography at Harvard University.
He heads the Geographic Insights Lab at Harvard, and one of their important contributions has been to make disaggregated district and constituency-level data on a wealth of indicators available publicly through dashboards.
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Getting datasets to talk to each other, releasing the data that is being collected, and strengthening existing data systems — three low-hanging fruits if the government does want to arm researchers of the pandemic with better information.
I thank Prof. Subramanian for speaking to me. Over the next few episodes, we’re going to shift gears now to talk about covid mortality.
Thank you for listening. This episode was edited by Anand Krishnamoorthi. On the next episode — a new question.
