25+ Destinations for Your Data Expedition

You may stumble upon data on election manifestos since 1952 or annual cow dung value per state. But you might struggle to find answers to basics like: how many villages does India have? Or cities? Or districts? This toolkit is for that second type of search. It lists 25+ credible destinations— including 3 hacks—to help you chart your own data journey.

🕵️‍♂️ 3 non-data places to find data

Not every treasure lies on a dashboard. Sometimes, it hides in parliamentary PDFs or social media threads. These 3 search tricks can get you to data even when you don’t know where to look.

1. Google Search Hack: Find the File, Not the Site

Want the spreadsheet, not the blog? Use filetype:xls (or xlsx, pdf, csv) at the end of your query.

Google will often surface the file itself—no need to wade through layers of pages.

🧭 Try this:

consumer expenditure survey filetype:xlsx

Brings up downloadable data from official sources in one click.

✅ Works even in the ChatGPT era.

2. Parliament Q&A: Where Facts Hide in Plain Sight

Each Parliament session—productive or not—produces hundreds of written answers to MPs’ questions. These are among the cleanest and most reliable sources of official numbers.

🔍 How to search:

“external debt” unstarred question site:sansad.in filetype:pdf

Or simply:

“Parliament Q&A” + your topic

💡 Pro tip: Use the term “unstarred question” — these get written replies (often with data tables), unlike starred questions which are answered orally.

3. X (Twitter) as a Live datawire

Think of X as the RSS feed for economists, ministries, and global institutions. Reports often appear there before they hit official sites—and come with bite-sized summaries.

💡 Two ways to cut the noise:

a) Google site search

site:x.com @WorldBankIndia poverty report

Finds posts indexed by Google—usually links to full reports.

b) X Lists (your custom data dashboard)

Go to Lists on your X account
Create a list (e.g. “Data Sources”)
Add handles like: @NITI_Aayog, @RBIsays, @MOSPI_India, @WorldBankIndia, @IMFNews, leading data journalists, think tanks

Now you’ve got a personal newswire — no doomscrolling, just data drops.

Big Data Sites

10000ft for Data Dashboard: Bigdata Sites

Topic-Wise Quick Links

Cases pending in courts

All India-, state-, and district-level data, updated daily. Also see Indian Justice Report 2025 (PDF via online search) for data on three legs of the justice system—police, judiciary, and legal aid.

https://njdg.ecourts.gov.in

Population profile and projection till 2036

https://mohfw.gov.in/?q=en/reports-0

Condensed version of the 2011 Census population data and projections till 2036

https://population.un.org/dataportal/

Population data for every year since 1950

(Aadhaar monthly database could also be used as current population proxy.)

Migration

https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/ Global data

https://eacpm.gov.in/reports/ Scroll down to the report ‘400 million dreams’

Inequality and poverty

https://wid.world/

https://pip.worldbank.org/home

https://worldbank.org/en/news/

https://factsheet/2025/06/05/june-2025-update-to-global-poverty-lines

https://ourworldindata.org/international-dollars

For comparison of poverty across countries

Employment and wages

https://mospi.gov.in/download-reports?main_cat=ODU5&cat=All&sub_category=All

Minimum wages by states over time https://clc.gov.in/clc/min-wages

Crimes and accidents

https://ncrb.gov.in/crime-in-india.html

Part PDF, part Excel of crime data

Election results

https://eci.gov.in/statistical-reports

PDFs of all election results: parliament and assembly

Agriculture

https://upag.gov.in/

Crop-wise production and yield data

https://apps.fas.usda.gov/gats/default.aspx

Trade in agriculture (Find the Annual Agriculture Survey and Nabard’s All India Rural Financial Inclusion Survey using the search hack explained on Page 184)