I vividly recall the first election-related data analysis project I worked on, for The Hindu’s print edition. In mid-March 2017, my colleague Srinivasan Ramani and I produced a double-page spread featuring maps, charts, and data analysis of elections in five States. We both knew what needed to be done, but the tools at our disposal were limited.

The first challenge was to scrape the Election Commission of India (ECI)’s website as results streamed in. This was a tall order given our primitive coding skills — mine, in fact, were non-existent at the time. Each State’s data took ages to scrape; like water droplets, data from each constituency would trickle down to our excel sheets.

In a print newsroom, such slow, unpredictable tasks are risky. Yet, given that this data formed the bedrock

See Full Page