In love with what @SabhyataDesign has cooked for @Bharat_Digital_'s website. It has been months in making and has so many tiny thoughtful details that reflect what we care for and stand for. Bharat Digital, a non-profit dedicated to humanising and modernising how governments use tech in service of the people. visit: bharatdigital.org

👀

The second cohort of public technologists graduated in July. Nineteen early-career designers and engineers spent six months across seven government departments, pushing actual code and design changes to systems used by millions and leaving them better than they found them. From redesigning IRCTC PDF tickets and FASTag local passes to supporting public librarians in rural Karnataka, improving public bus tracking systems, building MCPs for national statistics, and strengthening water-supply maintenance systems, the diversity of their work has been extraordinary. But the real change is that many of these fellows have decided to continue on this path, working in government and allied public-tech organisations. In the coming weeks, we’ll share more about what transpired during those six months. Follow @Bharat_Digital_ for that. I still cannot believe this fellowship is now a real thing. You can just do things?

:)

We worked with the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation’s Data Innovation Lab to create an official government MCP server that makes it easier for people to access India’s official statistical data. Under Bharat Digital's Labs vertical, we work with Governments to push the frontier of gov-tech by moving away from the mainstream and re-imagining how technologies can be leveraged in service of the public. Here, we worked with MOSPI to re-imagine what the next generation of open-data could look like. Open data has had a long-history. From its roots in RTI in 2005, it's been a long journey. Early waves of open data were to get governments to open data in any format possible (PDFs), second wave was to get machine-readable data (CSVs), then the community pushed for machine-accessible data (APIs). We saw consolidation in terms of open-data portals, and then we saw new aggregator-silos opening up with multiple open-data portals coming up. Throughout, the open-data community pushed for changes, rallied and found many champions within the government too. Do you know, the Indian Government has a National Data Sharing and Accessibility policy since 2012? What’s next for government open data? We think the current moment demands two things: Open-data should return to being infrastructure/public good, taking space not more than itself. Second, we try to make it easy for people to use the data and meet them where they are. The second point could mean different things for different cohorts of users. Making open-data accessible to people with limited data literacy in parts of rural India could mean very different from making data accessible to data scientists and economists. For India’s official statistics, the direct users are academics, researchers, policy makers, economists etc. For them, meeting them where they are means meeting them in their AI workflows in ChatGPT, Claude or Gemini. In that line, we worked with MOSPI’s Data Innovation Lab to design and develop an MCP Server that interfaces between any AI platforms and MOSPI’s data products. It wraps their already open and well-documented APIs on eSankhyiki (esankhyiki.mospi.gov.in) with additional context that makes it possible for it to access the data directly, responsibly and efficiently. More on the engineering and architectural principles behind the MCP in a blog later. With this live now, you can connect your consumer ChatGPT or Claude to MOSPI MCP and it can access data directly to support any questions that require statistical data about the country. You’ll be surprised at the diversity and depth of data collected by MOSPI from the inflation of namkeen, wages, industrialisation, manufacturing, energy production etc. The instructions are here: datainnovation.mospi.gov.in/… If you want to self-host, want to report a bug or want to see what’s under the hood, the code is released by MOSPI under MIT License: github.com/nso-india/esankhy… Our fellow from the previous cohort of Build for Bharat Fellowship, Mayank Kumavat and fellow from 2026 batch (Satvik Bajpai) worked on this project. Who are we? Bharat Digital is a non-profit with the goal of modernising and humanising how governments use technology in service of the public. Know more about us at bharatdigital.io

Care about improving India's gov-tech that impacts millions? Are you a designer? engineer? data scientist? gis? If you are a final-year student or early career professional, consider applying for the Build for Bharat Fellowship's 2026 cohort! Spend 6 months being deputed to a government org working on making real change while being mentored by experts. More deets in next tweet!