India's research platform for standardized district-level data.

Yes, and citing is free — it is not behind a paid tier. Every map, table, and export carries the underlying source and year, so the primary citation is always to the original publisher (Census of India, NFHS-5, RBI, and so on). Where you are citing our crosswalk or a derived value, cite Spatial India alongside it — our citation page gives you a ready-formatted reference with the version and access date. All data is used under India's NDSAP guidelines.

This is the core of the work. Census 2011 covers 640 districts, NFHS-5 covers ~707 as published, and other sources use different names and vintages again — so we reconcile all of them onto a single frame of 808 districts. Where a district was created after its source was published, the value is either inherited from the parent district or estimated area-proportionally, depending on the indicator. Every such value is flagged in the interface rather than silently filled. The full method, including where it is weakest, is on the methodology page.

It varies by source, and we show the year on every layer. The Census is 2011 and remains the population denominator for per-capita metrics — we do not hide that. But NFHS-5 runs to 2021, night-time lights to 2024, and RBI credit and Udyam MSME registrations to 2026. Census 2027 fieldwork is underway and our ingestion path is already built for it.

You can, and it does not leave your browser. Upload a CSV with a district column and we match it against the same crosswalk the rest of the platform uses, showing you exactly which rows matched and which need review — then your data behaves like any other layer, so you can map it, correlate it, and rank it against public indicators. The file is parsed locally and never uploaded to a server; we record only that an upload happened and its row count.

Export any view as CSV and you get the district identifiers alongside the values, which is the crosswalk applied to real data. The standalone crosswalk file — district codes, names, parent relationships, and estimation flags — is being prepared for publication with a permanent DOI so it can be cited directly. If you need it before then, email us and we will send it.

The map is free, with no login or credit card, and citation and attribution stay free. Deeper analysis — full indicator access, correlation tools, bring-your-own-data, the credit timeline, and unwatermarked exports — will sit behind a subscription priced for Indian research budgets, not enterprise GIS budgets. Nothing is being taken away from what is free today without saying so first.

Absolutely — it's our primary roadmap milestone. Census 2027 fieldwork is underway, and our architecture is purpose-built to ingest and serve it the moment data is released. Spatial India will be among the first platforms in the country to make it interactive.

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