Methodology

What this site is

A hub of seven short modules, each testing one candidate explanation for a single finding: that India ranks near the bottom of the Global Flourishing Study while holding the largest youth population on earth. No module is presented as the answer.

Source selection

Every headline figure traces to a primary or first-party source: peer-reviewed journals, Indian government surveys (MoSPI/NSO, Registrar General of India), or established research institutions (Pratham/ASER Centre, CSDS-Lokniti, NIMHANS). Where only a secondary report of a primary dataset was available — a press report of a Parliament reply, for instance — the row says so. Coaching-portal and aggregator summaries were used to locate figures and are never cited as sources.

Definitional flags

Three traps recur and are flagged wherever they appear: vocational training (4.2% formal vs ~21% any), students abroad (1.34 million cumulative stock vs 752,111 annual departures), and NEET (24.9% for ages 15–59 vs 21.0% for 15–24). The age band and the definition travel with the number.

Correlation and causation

The screen-time and mental-health evidence is cross-sectional and is described as correlational throughout. The Radicalization module rests on qualitative interview research and policy analysis; it describes a mechanism and its documented instances, and offers no prevalence estimate because no credible Indian one exists.

Known limitations

The national mental-health baseline is from 2015–16 and is treated as a floor. The population projections were published in 2020 and predate the delayed Census. DataReportal figures are proprietary estimates rather than a government count. The 81%/73% pluralism split and the −0.39 marital coefficient rest on the survey owners' own presentation and supplementary tables rather than a standalone downloadable table.

Archiving

A build-time script submits every cited URL once to the Wayback Machine and once to archive.today, and records both snapshot URLs plus the capture date against the figure. PDFs on stable government domains are archived too, because government sites restructure without notice. Sources that block archive bots are flagged for manual capture. The pass has not yet run; fields are marked pending rather than left blank.

Corrections applied before publication

Adopted PLFS Annual Report 2025 in place of the July 2023–June 2024 edition.

Newer edition supersedes the earlier figures. Added the comparability caveat about the 2025 methodological revamp.

Adopted India Skills Report 2026 in place of ISR 2025.

Newer edition. The gender employability gap has reversed — women 54% vs men 51.5%, against men 53.46% / women 47.53% the year before.

Replaced “3.2 hours” daily social-media time with ~2h 44m.

The 3.2-hour figure is not supported by DataReportal, the source it is usually attributed to.

Dropped the “3.8 hours” adolescent screen-time figure.

It originates in a non-Indian (Brazilian) study and cannot be attributed to Indian adolescents. Replaced with the 83.2% excess-screen-time prevalence from a correctly-attributed Indian study.

Re-attributed the SFI/OFI ranks to the Discover Global Society report-card paper.

The ranks are not in the Nature Mental Health flagship paper. Cite DOI 10.1007/s44282-026-00502-7.

Split the Module 4 screen-time citations across two studies.

The JNSM 2024 study supports the correlations and protective factors; the 83.2% prevalence belongs to a separate rural-Pune study.

Data last refreshed

11 SEPTEMBER 2026

No version number is used. Where a source publishes a newer edition, this site adopts it and records the swap in the corrections list above.