Source hierarchy
We prefer primary documents over reporting about them. In order:
- CAG performance and compliance audit reports
- Official programme dashboards and ministry returns
- Press Information Bureau releases and Parliament questions and answers
- Large official surveys — NFHS, NSS, ASER, NCRB, MoSPI
Where a secondary source is the only available record, we say so on the page.
How we cite
Every citation records the publisher, the publication date, the exact URL, an archived snapshot of that URL, the date we retrieved it, and a verbatim excerpt of the passage relied on. Where the source is a report with pages, we cite the page and paragraph.
Archiving
Government URLs move. Every source is submitted to a public web archive when we cite it, and the snapshot link is published beside the live one. An automated check runs over every published citation; if an archived copy stops resolving, the fact-check is flagged for review.
Dates on everything
A figure without a date is not usable. Every claim carries the date it was made, every audit finding carries the period it covers, and every current figure carries an as-of date. Where an audit's period closed before a claim was made, we mark it and state plainly that the audit does not assess that claim.
Numbers
We report figures in the units the source used, and we do not convert between units, rescale, or round in a way that changes the impression a figure gives. Where we show a claimed figure beside a verified one, both are drawn to the same scale.
What we do not do
We do not compute scores, indices, or rankings from audit findings. The number of audits a scheme has received reflects how much scrutiny it has attracted, not how well it has performed — the largest and highest-risk programmes are audited most. Turning audit counts into a score would report scrutiny as failure.
Where we show an index published by someone else, it is labelled with who published it.