About — India Data Atlas¶
About This Book¶
India Data Atlas is a comprehensive open-access guidebook to Indian geospatial, socio-economic, environmental, and political datasets. It is designed to help anyone — from a village-level field worker to a data scientist — find, access, and use India's vast public data resources.
The book covers datasets from national to village level, including:
- 🗺️ Boundary data — Administrative boundaries, OSM, GADM, Survey of India
- 📊 Socio-economic data — Census, NFHS, SECC, NSS/PLFS, ASER
- 🌿 Environment & agriculture — IMD weather, LULC, forest cover, crop data, WRIS, groundwater
- 🏗️ Infrastructure & governance — MGNREGA, UDISE+, HMIS, PMGSY, NDAP, DBT
- 🛰️ Remote sensing — Bhuvan, Google Earth Engine, Sentinel, Landsat, MODIS
- 🔌 APIs & web services — Bhuvan OGC, GEE API, AI Kosh, data.gov.in API, WRIS
- 🖥️ Visualization — QGIS, Python/GeoPandas/Folium, MapLibre GL
About the Author¶
Sudarshan Bhoyar is a geospatial researcher and open-data advocate working on Indian datasets. He built this guidebook to make India's public data accessible to everyone — from policy makers and researchers to developers and journalists.
"Data that isn't used isn't data — it's just bytes on a server. This book exists to help more people use India's remarkable public data infrastructure."
How to Contribute¶
This book is maintained as a GitHub repository and welcomes contributions:
- 📝 Add a new dataset — Submit a PR with a new page following the template
- 🔗 Fix a broken link — Open an issue or submit a fix
- ⭐ Star the repo — Helps others find the book
GitHub: github.com/sudarshanbhoyar/datasource
Data Access Legend¶
Throughout this book, we use a consistent system to indicate how difficult it is to access each dataset:
| Icon | Meaning |
|---|---|
| 🟢 | No Login — Direct download, no registration needed |
| 🟡 | Free Registration — Free account required |
| 🔵 | GIS / Coding Skills — Need QGIS or Python |
| 🔴 | Advanced / Restricted — MOU, research approval, or advanced skills required |
Disclaimer¶
- All data described in this book is sourced from official Indian government portals and international open data sources.
- Dataset availability, URLs, and formats may change over time. The GitHub repository is maintained to keep links updated.
- Some datasets require institutional affiliation or approval for unit-level access.
- This book is for educational purposes only. Always check individual dataset licences before using data in commercial projects.
Version History¶
| Version | Date | Changes |
|---|---|---|
| v1.0 | July 2026 | Initial release — 7 chapters, 35+ datasets |
| v1.2 | TBD | Add State-level data chapter |
| v2.0 | TBD | Census 2024 data integration |
Citation¶
If you use this guidebook in your research, please cite it as:
Bhoyar, S. (2026). India Data Atlas: A Comprehensive Guide to Indian Open Data Sources.
Available at: https://sudarshanbhoyar.github.io/datasource/
Acknowledgements¶
This book was made possible thanks to:
- Government of India — for making vast amounts of public data freely available
- ISRO/NRSC — for the Bhuvan platform and Indian satellite data
- ESA Copernicus Programme — for free Sentinel satellite data
- NASA — for Landsat, MODIS, and Earth science datasets
- OpenStreetMap contributors — for free global map data
- Google Earth Engine — for the cloud computing platform
- The MkDocs Material team — for the excellent documentation framework
- The Python geospatial ecosystem — GeoPandas, Rasterio, Folium contributors
Made with ❤️ for every Indian data user — from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.