Nagarpedia is a Nagrika Initiative to expand information and understanding on Small Cities. The objective of Nagarpedia is to encourage and enable citizens to bridge the knowledge gap of information available online on small cities, starting with Wikipedia.

How?

Through Nagarpedia we encourage citizens to put information regarding cities on various open source platforms. To enable citizens we have created tools like a guidebook, training tutorials, citizen friendly databases and data sources to help citizens anywhere in the world to add, edit and expand information about small cities. We also organize Wikathons (editathons) which bring people together in one place, physically as well as virtually to enable them to edit various wikipedia pages that seem to be lacking information.

Why?

Citizens are a rich source of knowledge about their cities. Nudging people to put this missing information online can help bridge this knowledge gap.

Lack of information regarding small cities hampers not just policy makers and businesses but also citizens. Small and mid sized Indian cities have little online visibility. The Wikipedia page of a city is often the first result in search engines when searching for information related to a city. Wikipedia is free, easily understandable and accessible, and relatively reliable. The knowledge available on Wikipedia enables thought and action for citizens.

Current Campaign: Adopt A City Page

We invite you to join us in a collective effort to expand the information available on small cities on the internet through our campaign to Adopt a City page on Wikipedia. Attend our next Wikathon to learn all about it and then you are free to edit as and when you like, in your own time.

To get you started, we put together a list of things you can check for your page along with sources of the information.

Population of the city (Census 2011) - Census India website
Lok Sabha Members (can filter statewise as well) - Official link
Type and area of municipality- Census handbooks (Town Amenities); Municipality website
Number of wards and councillors - Municipality website; Google news

You can also check out Nagarpedian's Sandbox, or Chennai/Ghaziabad's city page to see what a city page should look like. If you adopt a city page, do fill this quick form with your username and city. We will be happy to share more sources of information on your request.

If you need help with choosing a city get in touch with us at nagarpedia@nagrika.org