Social reality invariably has a spatial background. Space therefore matters, in our country, endowed with considerable diversity – social, cultural and regional. Even the administrative boundaries of the States subsume within themselves this diversity, given the sheer size of the Indian states. Any decentralised development effort must therefore take this diversity into account for which we need reliable data for these regions.

Fortunately, India has had a long tradition of collecting data on various socio economic and demographic parameters (such as Census, the NSSO, SRS, NFHS, IHDS), which have provided useful inputs in the design of policies and programme. Over the years, this sound system of collection of data has been vital for the effective development of social policy, for informed decision making on policy issues and for evaluation of the impact of social and economic policies. Not all data are available however, at the granular level of a district. Most survey results are presented at the level of the state – a unit with a coarse granularity hiding within itself the regional dimension of most reported parameters. Is there a trade-off available?

Fortunately again, we have a long and well recognised sampling frame based on natural regions, under the National Sample Survey Organisation’s sampling frame. The NSSO has used this frame in conducting surveys across India on various socio-economic aspects since 1950. These NSS regions provide an intermediate unit at which most data can be made available. These are relatively more homogenous-- in terms of natural topography, agro-climatic conditions and similar cultural attributes ( Concepts and Definitions, Used in NSS), unlike the states, and are large enough compared to a district for the data to be disaggregated at this level yielding fairly robust estimates of many indicators. As a result, it is possible and useful to disaggregate data from various National level surveys e.g., NFHS, SRS, IHDS etc. onto the NSS regional platform. On the other hand, it is also possible, to aggregate various data available at the district level e.g., the Census, the DLHS, NFHS and so on, at the level of NSS regions. Availability of comparable data on various indices both in space and in time on this platform of 88 natural regions can therefore be an unparalled resource for the academic and policy community. Hence the relevance of this web-site.

It is not just the data, the site also aims to integrate GIS map of these natural regions and link these with various parameters from different sets of data pooled at the level of these 88 natural regions ( as classified by NSSO- Annexure 2). This geo-analytical facility will reveal contiguities across regions cutting across the administrative boundaries of the state as well as diversities within a state. These maps will tell us as to here does the shoe pinch, unlike in the case of data which tells us whether it pinches. These natural regions would provide a valuable meso level common data platform across a large number of development parameters both cross sectional and temporal. It is less macro than a state and less micro compared to districts where such data platform is difficult to obtain. It can also help in identification of contiguous clusters, whether in terms of the IMR, nutrition, availability of household electricity, or workforce participation for that matter. This can be crucial both for policy and for research.

Thus, this website is envisaged to emerge as a major data repository involving all big data sets from India, thereby offering data for a very large number of diverse socio economic parameters at the level of the 88 natural regions, on a common spatial platform. We also propose to invite scholars to present their analyses at the level of the NSSO regions and trigger thereby a robust intellectual discourse in regional studies in the country.