Open dataset: 143 Indian government helpline numbers, each with its official source URL (CC BY 4.0)

[suyash raj]

Hello DataMeet,

I have put together a dataset of Indian government helpline numbers and I would like the group to tear it apart before I promote it anywhere.

What it is. 143 helpline numbers run by central and state government bodies — emergency, health, women and child, senior citizens, labour, cyber crime, consumer, disaster. One row per helpline.

Fields. name, number, category, jurisdiction (national or the state), languages, hours, sourceUrl, dateVerified.

How each row was verified. Every number carries a sourceUrl pointing at the page on a .gov.in or .nic.in domain where that number is published by the body that runs it, plus the dateVerified on which that page was read. No number came from a news article, an aggregator, or another list. Where a source page gave a number that contradicted another government page, the row was dropped rather than guessed at. That is the whole method — it is manual, and it means the dataset is only as fresh as its dateVerified column.

Licence. CC BY 4.0.

Where.

Browsable: https://aisewak.com/helplines

JSON: https://aisewak.com/helplines/helplines.json

What I would like from this group. Corrections. Numbers that have changed, state helplines I have missed, and in particular any row whose sourceUrl no longer resolves or no longer shows that number. Reply on this thread or mail me and I will fix the row and bump its dateVerified.

Disclosure: I run AiSewak, which builds voice agents for Indian languages, and the dataset came out of that work. It is published under CC BY 4.0 with no strings — use it, fork it, mirror it.

Suyash Raj

https://x.com/suyash_raj

[Bryan]

Hi Suyash — I found two concrete improvements for the directory:

1. The Chhattisgarh and Kerala 1076 CM Helpline entries both link to /helplines/1076, which opens the Uttar Pradesh/Jansunwai guide. Their official source links already point to the right states: Chhattisgarh (https://cmhelpline.cg.gov.in/Home/ContactUs) and Kerala (https://cmo.kerala.gov.in/help.php). Until there are separate guides, linking those service names directly to their own official source would prevent the cross-state jump.

2. Chhattisgarh's hours are blank in the directory, but its contact page (https://cmhelpline.cg.gov.in/Home/ContactUs) now explicitly says the portal and helpline are active 24/7. That gives you a source-backed hours update.

For the first issue, the durable fix is to match guides using state + service + number, not the number alone. That also keeps different services sharing a short code from inheriting each other's instructions.

Checked on 27 September. These are page/source checks, not test calls. Happy to help turn the guide-matching check into a small regression test if useful.

— Bryan, CivicDataForge