One day, Arun C. Mehta, former Professor and Head of the Department of Educational Management Information System (EMIS) at the National Institute of Educational Planning and Administration (NIEPA), opened his inbox to find a set of emails. Scholars from India and abroad were seeking his help in accessing the datasets he was part of—DISE and later UDISE—during his fifteen-year tenure as project director between 2002 and 2017.

One researcher told him they were conducting a longitudinal study on social segregation in Indian schools. Another was working in the field of empirical microeconomics of education. Both reported the same issue: they could not find DISE and UDISE data online, from the early DISE years beginning 1994–95, through the years of nationwide coverage after 2005–06, up to the final UDISE cycle in 2017–18. Over the years, he received many such emails from researchers and journalists, all echoing the same concern.

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