Jhatpat India

Have you ever wondered about the curious case of lsquorrsquo and lsquolarsquo in Indian languages Most of the languages in India despite their affiliation to four different language families IndoAryan Dravidian TibetoBurman and AustroAsiatic share several phonetic features Take Marathi for instance A defining feature is the frequent substitution of the consonant lsquolarsquo in Sanskrit words with the retroflex lateral flap lsquorsquo So when you say kamal lotus in Hindi and Marathi the retroflex sound is distinct in the latterSoftware developer Ashris Choudhury long wondered whyThe 25yearold Vizagborn developer and data visualiser researched major Indian languages and their phonetics online before he turned to coding to make a static map on the retroflex la The caption of the post uploaded on various social media platforms read ldquoThe retroflex la is a sound present in all the south Indian and west Indian Languagesmdashit is even present in the north Indian dialects of Himachal and Uttarakhand Does your language have this soundrdquoIn this map the score you see is the worst score that a state has got when judged against all the goals set by the United NationsIt was the perfect tease He received 206876 views on YouTube with many netizens heaping praise on the detailing of the maprsquos graphicThe maps Choudhury has produced till date using a mix of design and data have earned him social media fameChoudhury started India in Pixels as a side project in early 2019 Having lived in various parts of southern India thanks to his naval officer father Choudhury was familiar with the Dravidian cultural landscape Every new idea he says emerges from his curiosity ldquoI want to know everything I was an only child deeply curious about Indiarsquos cultures I think this is what happens to children who shuttle between towns and grow up seeing everything change around themrdquo he tells midday in a telephonic interviewAshris ChoudhuryAfter securing a Bachelorrsquos degree in architecture from IIT Kharagpur he pursued a visiting studentship at MIT Media Lab in the US ldquoI had a Swadeslike moment around that timerdquo he says referring to the Shah Rukh Khanstarrer ldquoI felt like I needed to come back to my roots And so after having plunged into the startup domain in India I slowly began documenting everything interesting I discovered for India in PixelsrdquoBeing a techie coding is a piece of cake for Choudhury He procures information from government and academic websites which are open source to create interactive maps ldquoThere is so much information out there I think up a topic and then go digging for data and figures What started as a fascination for infographics has now turned into a passion projectrdquo His first video was a flop though ldquoMy first post was on Indiarsquos top 15 economically successful states from 1950 till date No one saw it A friend suggested that I make something for cricket lovers I had 100k views in a week for a post on the top 20 cricketers ranked by total catches in ODIs 1971 to 2019rdquo he recollectsThe latest map which was unveiled on the 75th Independence Day is about Indiarsquos crucial six digit numbersmdashthe pin code system Introduced by Shriram Bhikaji Velankar former Addl Secretary in the Ministry of Communications pin codes were implemented across India on August 15 1972 The objective was to simplify mailsorting and speed up delivery Choudhury made an insightful map with each dot denoting a different pin code of India ldquoPeople loved it itrsquos just so visually appealing The pin codes were introduced some 50 years ago and are still so relevant Thatrsquos what fascinated my followersrdquoApart from using academic databases Choudhury also relies on World Bank data He does come across comments from other coders who usually express doubts over accuracy of the numbers ldquoItrsquos a oneman army I donrsquot have a team to conduct research or surveys from scratch before making these maps I rely entirely on government data which I believe is accurate All I do is type a code it does the heavylifting thereon I donrsquot go and verify the data I look at a source see how the webpage is structured and then write a code which copies the information exactly and I always mention my sourcerdquo he clarifiesHaving spent the last two years flirting with statistics and numbers Choudhury thinks official information is scarce and the authorities need to expand sample collection ldquoSurveys are done with a minimal population So the sample size is very small usually But thatrsquos not my problem to solve What I can do is create a database of these maps so that researchers can refer to my website and get their job done faster In India we donrsquot have a single platform for information Itrsquos scatteredrdquoIt is at this point in the interview that this writer who has been following India in Pixels for a while remembers a fun map Choudhury created and released on August 4 It asks a pertinent questionmdashwhat does your state suck the most at The United Nations has set a series of goals for all nations of the world for us to have a better universe These goals include reducing hunger providing clean energy aiming for gender equality and so on Indiarsquos NITI Aayog uses these goals to measure how our states are performing In this map the score you see is the worst score that a state has got among all its goals Overall India sucks the most at providing food It has a high hunger level Maharashtra Gujarat and Karnataka have more hungry people while Rajasthan Punjab Haryana and Uttarakhand fared lowest in gender equality Forest and wildlife conservation is lowest in Jammu and Kashmir whereas West Bengal Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are failing at climate actionldquoIt has been a terrific journey Within 40 days of launching my page on YouTube I had 25000 subscribers Today I have 84000 followers on Instagram and 121k subscribers on YouTube My goal is to grow these pages and tell Indiarsquos story one pixel at a timerdquoDid you knowthinspOf all the 117 players who qualified for the Tokyo Olympics 2020 25 per cent are from HaryanathinspThe states with higher percentage of circumcised men also reported lower than average percentage of HIV infected populationthinspIn the year 2020 Facebook received 222K requests from governments requesting data from users