A newspaper with its workings shown

The Age Of Stars is printed from a public database of Indian money and banking between 1875 and 2017: a catalogue of 180 primary sources, series extracted from scanned official volumes, and 1,050 dated records of rates, loans, failures, policies and disputes. Nothing on these pages is typed in by hand. Change the database and the paper reprints itself.

Four rules

Every figure has a source. Each record names the document it came from and the kind of source it is, from an official statistical abstract down to an attributed claim.

Every figure has a grade. Verified figures were checked against the document itself. Reported figures come from a secondary account. Estimated figures are derived or approximate. Unconfirmed means the source was cited but could not be opened.

A blank is not a zero. Where the record is silent the paper is silent too. A thin edition means a thin record, not a quiet year.

Disagreements are printed, not settled. Where two sources give different figures for the same loan or balance, both appear, and the tables warn against adding them up.

The type changes with the date

Each edition is set in a face suited to its era: crown rule (1875 to 1913), war and depression (1914 to 1946), the planned republic (1947 to 1990) and the open economy (1991 to 2017). The masthead stays in blackletter throughout. The night edition keeps the same design on dark paper.

Features

The long reads are written from the same database and footnoted line by line. Where the writers wanted a fact the record could not support, they left it out and said so.

Taking the data away

Every series and table has a CSV download on the Statistical Supplement, Ledger,Banks and Sources pages. Please cite the original source given with each figure.