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166. Struck by Data (Rukmini S, Sudipto Mondal and Samar Halarnkar)
What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India
Speakers
How do you see India?
Fuelled by a surge of migration to cities, the country’s growth appears to be defined by urbanisation and by its growing, prosperous middle class. It is also defined by progressive and liberal young Indians, who vote beyond the constraints of identity, and paradoxically, by an unchecked population explosion and rising crimes against women. Is it, though?
In this conversation with Journalists Samar Halarnkar and Sudipto Mondal, about her book, Whole Numbers and Half Truths, data-journalism pioneer Rukmini S. draws on nearly two decades of on-ground reporting experience to piece together a picture that looks nothing like the one you might expect. As she interrogates how data works, and how the push and pull of social and political forces affect it, Rukmini creates a blueprint to understand the changes of the last few years and the ones to come—a toolkit for India.
This is a timely and wholly original intervention in the conversation on data, and with it, India. This conversation was part of the Bangalore Literature Festival, 2021 which took place in the Bangalore International Centre premises in December 2021.
Speakers
Rukmini S
Rukmini S. is an independent data journalist based in Chennai.
In 2004, she began covering Mumbai city for The Times of India. Since 2010, she has specialised in data journalism. She was the first Data Editor of an Indian newsroom, first at The Hindu and then at HuffPost India. She has also reported on the field from across the country.She now writes for a range of publications including Mint, IndiaSpend and The Guardian. Her pandemic podcast, The Moving Curve, won an Emergent Ventures India COVID-19 Prize in 2020. She was awarded the Chameli Devi Jain Awards for an Outstanding Woman Journalist (Honourable Mention) in 2020 and a Likho Award for Excellence in Media in 2019.
Born in Pune, she studied in Mumbai and London and has a postgraduate diploma in social communications media and an MSc in development studies
Sudipto Mondal
Sudipto Mondal is the Executive Editor of The News Minute. An investigative journalist with a special interest in caste and communal relations. Previously with The Hindu, Hindustan Times, Al Jazeera and The Federal.
Samar Halarnkar
A journalist for 30 years, Samar Halarnkar is the editor of http://www.article-14.com, a website focussed on the operation of the rule of law in India. His last job was editor of IndiaSpend.org and Factchecker.in, nonprofits focused on data-driven, public-interest journalism. He conceptualized databases and guided related reporting on hate crime, air pollution and other issues. Before that he was managing editor of Hindustan Times and has held other managerial positions at the Indian Express and India Today. He has been a columnist for many years, writing for Scroll, Mint, Hindustan Times, The Globe and Mail (Canada), and the New York Times. Halarnkar has also been a visiting lecturer at the University of California-Berkeley and a fellow at the Nieman Foundation, Harvard. He has won national awards on investigative and technology reporting.
