Putting India

to scrape it (or convert it into a usable table), to mapping the data, and responding to questions and comments. “If it’s going to be a map, I have code for that,” Choudhury says. “If it’s something else, then I sketch it out and plan what shape it should take.”

Choudhury sources his data from government and university data portals. His mostused sources are the Census, Niti Aayog reports, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, and data from the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies. For international numbers, he refers to World Bank data and university databases.

“The public perception is that we don’t have data in this country,” he says. “But if you keep at it, you’ll find that there is data being collected at various levels. You don’t run out of topics to delve into.”

Choudhury is working on maps that represent more than numbers too. One such experiment maps the equivalent of “Bhaiyya” (as used when referring casually to someone you don’t really know) in every Indian state, with many of the terms crowdsourced from his followers. It’s Bhaiyya, of course, in majority-hindi-speaking states; “Bhau” in Maharashtra; “Bhaiji” and “Bhai saa” in Rajasthan; “Bhiya” in Bihar; “Anna” in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka; “Annaiya” in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana; “Chetta” in Kerala. And “Ado bah” in Meghalaya; “Au” or “Ka Pu” in Mizoram; and “Ate” in the Apatani dialect of Arunachal Pradesh.

“Reactions to these kinds of maps tell me that people are interested in niche, nerdy things like this too,” Choudhury says.

More than anything, Choudhury’s maps represent the multi-layered complexity of India. One that perhaps did this best is the July 2019 map that shot him to fame: If states were renamed for countries with similar populations (Gujarat would be Italy; Maharashtra’s population equalled that of Japan; and Rajasthan’s equalled that of the UK). “A couple of Youtubers reacted to it and overnight I went from a few hundred followers to 4,000,” Choudhury says. “I think as Indians we have internalised the fact that we are a big country with a big population. But when you see that every state has as many people as whole other countries, it’s pretty interesting.”

Make of it what you will, he adds. His aim is to present the data, not interpret it.

PHOTO: KARMA SONAM BHUTIA Choudhury sources his data from government and university reports. He uses an algorithm to scrape it (or convert it into a usable table), and has designed a code that lets him turn that data into his specialised maps. The series of documentary shorts by Vineet Arora and Jaimin Rajani (right) includes one on Hemen & Co (below), a music store that makes its own instruments and once sold a sitar to George Harrison.