Rukmini Shrinivasan

One of the reasons that we set Data For India up is because not having access to data and data-driven insights about India can lead to inaccurate narratives developing and taking hold over public discourse. This is certainly the case when it comes to India's demographics. The narrative about India being a young country is quite deeply ingrained in our vision of ourselves.

One of the biggest labour stories of the last eight years is the increase in women in India's manufacturing workforce. As I pointed out in an earlier edition of The Big Shift, that growth, as my colleague Nileena Suresh finds, is heavily driven by one activity alone - 'custom tailoring'. India now has 12 million custom tailors, and one in six manufacturing workers is a custom tailor. Of the 14 million new manufacturing jobs added between 2018 and 2024, five million were in custom tailoring alone.

In most areas, it's an exciting time to be in the business of problem-solving for India. The big developing country problems - infant mortality, maternal mortality, preventable deaths from infectious diseases, extreme poverty - are beginning to recede, and drilling down to find where the problems now remain is fascinating and rewarding.