Auto-updating tracker of Indian development policies across 22 sectors — fetching from 20+ official sources every 6 hours via GitHub Actions.
A complement to impactmojo.in and the OpenStacks for Change ecosystem.
Live at varnasr.github.io/PolicyDhara
PolicyDhara (पॉलिसीधारा — "Policy Stream") provides a living, searchable archive of Indian development policy. It aggregates policy documents, schemes, legislation, budget allocations, and analysis from official government portals and research institutions — automatically refreshed every 6 hours.
It is designed for researchers, journalists, advocates, and practitioners who need to track policy developments across India's complex governance landscape without manually monitoring dozens of government portals.
- Central and state government policies, schemes, and legislation
- Union Budget allocations and fiscal policy statements
- Parliament bills, session data, and legislative productivity
- Notifications, gazette circulars, and executive orders
- Think tank analysis and international development body reports
| Cluster | Sectors |
|---|---|
| Social | Education, Health, Gender, Social Protection, Nutrition |
| Economy | Finance, Agriculture, Labour, Infrastructure, Digital |
| Environment | Climate, Water, Energy, Environment |
| Governance | Democracy, Legal, Defence, Urban, Rural |
| International | Trade, Foreign Policy, Development Cooperation |
| Source | Type |
|---|---|
| PIB (Press Information Bureau) | Government press releases |
| PRS Legislative Research | Bills, acts, and parliament analysis |
| India Code | Legislation database |
| eGazette of India | Official gazette notifications |
| NITI Aayog | Policy reports and flagship scheme updates |
| RBI | Monetary policy, financial sector regulation |
| Supreme Court of India | Landmark judgements |
| ORF | Strategic policy analysis |
| CPR India | Governance and accountability research |
| ICRIER | Trade, investment, and economic policy |
| World Bank India | Development policy assessments |
| UNDP India | SDG and human development updates |
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ GitHub Actions (every 6 hours) │
│ │
│ update-policies.yml │
│ ├── Fetch from 20+ sources (RSS, APIs, scrape) │
│ ├── Classify by sector (22 categories) │
│ ├── Deduplicate and score relevance │
│ ├── Commit updated data to repository │
│ └── Trigger GitHub Pages rebuild │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
│
GitHub Pages (static hosting)
│
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ varnasr.github.io/PolicyDhara │
│ ├── Searchable policy database │
│ ├── Sector filters (22 categories) │
│ ├── Source attribution for every entry │
│ └── Email digest for subscribers │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
| Task | Frequency | Mechanism |
|---|---|---|
| Policy data refresh | Every 6 hours | update-policies.yml (GitHub Actions) |
| Site deploy | On data commit | deploy.yml (GitHub Pages) |
| PyPI package publish | On release | publish-pypi.yml |
git clone https://github.com/Varnasr/PolicyDhara.git
cd PolicyDhara
# Install dependencies (Python)
pip install -r requirements.txt
# Run a manual policy fetch
python fetch_policies.py
# Serve the static site locally
python3 -m http.server 8000| Layer | Technology | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Data Pipeline | Python | Fetching, classifying, and deduplicating policy data |
| Automation | GitHub Actions | Scheduled data refresh (6-hourly) and deploy |
| Frontend | Vanilla HTML / CSS / JS | Static searchable site |
| Hosting | GitHub Pages | Auto-deploy from repository |
| Package | PyPI | Python package for the policy data pipeline |
- ImpactMojo — Main platform (PolicyDhara is embedded)
- PolicyStack — OpenStacks policy data layer
- INDIA-DATA — Bihar electoral data analysis
- someperspective — India's political economy analysis
MIT License — see LICENSE for details.
- Platform: impactmojo.in
- GitHub: github.com/Varnasr