Nagarpedia
Documenting India’s Small Cities, Together
Join the Nagarpedia Community
Nagarpedia is Nāgrika’s open-knowledge initiative that works to expand, improve, and strengthen publicly available information about India’s small and mid-sized cities.
Through citizen-led edit-a-thons and collaborative documentation, Nagarpedia bridges the gap between what people know about their cities and what is available online for others to learn from, reference, and build upon.
Small cities are often invisible in public discourse.
Nagarpedia works to make their histories, ecologies, institutions, and lived experiences visible - freely and openly.
Why Nagarpedia
When people search for a small city, Wikipedia is often the first result.
That page shapes how the place is understood - by journalists, students, researchers, and planners.
But there is a problem
When small cities are poorly documented, they are left out of the public conversation.
About two-thirds of India’s 4,041 cities have a Wikipedia page - yet nearly 90% of these pages contain very little information.
A Practical Example
In many cities, residents trying to protect a lake, a historic neighbourhood, or a public commons face a familiar challenge:
“Where is the public record?”
What Nagarpedia Does
Nagarpedia organises structured edit-a-thons
and thematic documentation drives focused on
→ Urban lakes, wetlands, and rivers
→ Local institutions and municipal information
→ Citizen movements and stewardship efforts
→ Public spaces, heritage, and neighbourhood
histories
→ Under-documented small towns and cities
We work through collaborative platforms that
have no single owner and where knowledge is
collectively created, improved, and reviewed over
time - such as Wikipedia.
