B. Data observed in the wild

Data mentioned in Section A is of high quality, but is only limited to the formal sector. Moreover, it disproportionately covers urban India and is unable to quantify growth in more rural parts of the country.

To counter this, we tried to create metrics from data observed in the wild.

B1. Satellite-based Nightlight Intensity

NASA releases images of nighlight intensity in different parts of the world every month. These images can be used as a proxy to see how developed a region is. An example of one such image is show below.

NASA Composite of nightlight intensity over South Asia. Source: NASA

We created an algorithm to quantify the intensity of these nightlights at a city level. As expected, this intensity was highest in big metropolitican areas like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Kolkata, Lucknow, and others.

Absolute nightlight intensity was — expectedly — the highest in the large cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Chennai, Lucknow, Kolkata, and more

We then tracked how nightlight intensity changed over time. It’s important to note that an increase in growth is not always accompanied by an increase in nightlight intensity. For instance, banks making more money in Mumbai will cause high growth but are unlikely to change the nighlight intensity of Mumbai. However, increase in nightlight intensity does correlate with more factories set up, more houses created, and more roads built.

We noticed that the highest increases in nightlight intensity from 2014 to 2018 came from under-developed regions like Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh. The city with the highest increase in nightlight intensity in India was Purbi Champaran in Bihar (388% increase from 2014 to 2018). In Uttar Pradesh, Domariaganj had the highest increase (160% increase from 2014 to 2018).

Increase in nightlight intensity was highest in Bihar and eastern UP

B2. Vehicle Registration Data

In addition to nightlight intensity, we also obtained information about monthly scooter/motorcycle and car registrations in individual Indian cities. Using this, we were able to quantify how these are changing throughout the country.

For instance, Bihar saw stupendous growth in 2-wheeler registrations in the first half of 2018. On the other hand, growth in Karnataka has been mostly flat, and had faced a sustained decline in recent months.

Growth in 2-wheeler vehicle registrations in Bihar

Growth in 2-wheeler vehicle registrations in Karnataka

Curiously, we also found that the city of Amethi, Uttar Pradesh (the former parliamentary constituency of Rahul Gandhi) had an absurdly high growth in 2-wheeler registrations throughout 2013. We will leave speculations around the reasons for this to the reader.

In the last 6 months (Feb — Jul 2019), we have found that areas in the North-East, and parts of Bihar, West Bengal, and Chhattisgarh have had the highest growth in two-wheeler registrations.

Conversely, parts of Punjab, Gujarat, and Maharashtra had the lowest growth in two-wheeler registrations.

This data is not completely indicative of growth. Changes in two-wheeler registrations might be also be influenced by availability of public transportation and ride-sharing services. However, we believe that it is a strong indicator of growth and changes in income levels in less urban areas of the country.

B3. Electronic Payments Data

Electronic Payments are the least useful indicator in this post for measuring economic health. They are still being adopted by much of the country, and changes in their trends holds little value for measuring economic health right now. However, we believe that they will begin to have significant predictive value once they have been widely adopted.

We have included some charts of payment indicators in India over the last 5 years in this post. It’s interesting to note that India transacts 30x more value in mobile-banking payments compared to mobile-wallet ones.