Delving deeper into data to find a story

Falah Faisal | NT

Bengaluru

The 8th edition of Bangalore BizLit fest got underway online with V Raghunathan, Chair - of Bangalore Business Literature Festival, addressing the audience noting that it was the first of its kind in India and that this time the focus would be on the startup culture. “The aim of the LitFest is to inspire conversations between brilliant minds with the skin in the game,” said author Ganesh Vancheeswaran who was the host for the day.

 The first session titled New Age Literature featured Ankur Warikoo and Ranjeet Pratap Singh about the former book Do Epic Shit, which was followed by The Westland Saga. Although the highlight of the day was Mining Real Data – Navigating Convenient Untruths which Rukmini S, author of Whole Numbers and Half-Truths: What Data Can and Cannot Tell Us About Modern India, and Govindraj Ethiraj, Journalist; founder – IndiaSpend in conversation with Debleena Majumdar, Author; Cofounder – Kahaniyah.

 The talk focused on the relationship between data and inconvenient truths about topics such as unemployment, marriage, crime, and caste. “If you torture data enough, it will confess,” said Debleena while asking Rukmini about the hardest truths she had to deal with in her latest book. To which she responded, “Data reveals that young Indians are marrying much as their grandparents did – arranged and endogamous. The youth doesn’t seem to be progressing with the times.”

 While also pointing out that data regarding the crime was the hardest to gather. “The problem with data in the country is that it is not updated fast enough,” she adds, which leads to people becoming sceptical and sometimes even cynical about it.

Govindraj on the other hand believes that the only way to get Indians interested in Data related stories is by making them interesting and engaging, which is why his organization IndiaSpend organizes India Fact Quiz that sees nearly 100- 500 people participating. “We need to develop critical thinking from a young age, it’s only then you will come to data as a tool,” he says.

When asked about interesting facts that data reveals he noted that “We believe India is a vegetarian country but according to our survey in May 2018 that 80% men and 70% women consume some form of diary, eggs or chicken on a weekly basis and it was a lot more prominent in the South.” Day 2 of the fest has sessions on The Shark Tank Tales, How to Build a Prosperous India, An Insider’s Lens into the Indian Corporate Frauds, and From High-Fliers to Fallen Angels - Stories of Cafe Coffee Day, Reliance (ADAG), Jet Airways, Kingfisher Airlines.