DAKSH and India Together (www.indiatogether.org) have instituted the DAKSH-India Together Fellowship to encourage data journalism centered around elections.

In election season, everybody is a pundit and has a view about the factors that will determine the outcome of the election. The diversity of the electorate ensures that everyone can get their voice in and can claim credit for predicting something right! One of the all-time favourites during election is the argument around caste and its importance.

Caveat emptor: I wish I knew. And so do hundreds of wannabe-MPs right now, I’m sure. Karthik Shashidhar’s very interesting analysis of our data in Mint earlier this week documents some of the reasons we heard from nearly 2.5 lakh people across the country.

This post is specifically for people who are looking at either the detailed survey data or at least the Constituency-level summaries of our data. So if you’re not one of those serious data-monkeys, begone!

The DAKSH-ADR Survey 2014 reached over 2 lakh respondents across the country from various backgrounds. We asked people to identify and rate the issues that are important to them when they vote in an election.

With the MP survey results coinciding with my son’s exams, I guess it’s not surprising that my thoughts turn to how our MPs have scored :). And overall, I must say it’s a pretty poor showing across the board.

“You talked to two-and-a-half lakh people? Are you serious? Why?” “You did this offline? Using paper and pen? OMG! Why not online?

OK, so it’s official. Arvind Kejriwal will attempt a Raj Narain against Narendra Modi in Varanasi. Varanasi claims to be one of the oldest living cities in the world.

As General Elections 2014 draw closer there is more than the usual pre-election excitement. The Modi versus Rahul show down, the unpredictability of Kejriwal, the positioning of the fringe players and the eternal hopefuls from the “Third Front” are dominating the talk in the pre-election season.

Watching Rajdeep Sardesai, Prof. Trilochan Sastry and the others debate the MP Scorecard a few minutes ago on CNN-IBN was a terrific feeling. Six years of doing this at a State level, now going National, is a great step forward for us at Daksh. Thanks for making this happen, ADR!