Deepali Shukla
Deepali Shukla
SANKHYAON SE KHELNE WALI LADKI: SANKHYA PRAVEEN PRAKALPA SHANKAR (THE GIRL WHO PLAYED WITH NUMBERS) by Shreyasi Singh Pratham Books, 2019, 16 pp., 50
November 2019, volume 43, No 11

After reading the second line of the title of the book, I wondered about the meaning of Sankhya Praveen. Is Prakalpa so well acquainted with numerals and numeric functions that she was conferred with this title? But as soon as you read the story, the mystery unfolds. The story isn’t about Prakalpa, but about the initiative she has led; Social Caps, a company that extensively deals with quantitative data analysis. Now, the adjective Sankhya Praveen seems somewhat out of place.

This book explains how Prakalpa’s company works and collects data at the ground level through different tools. It explores the how and why of government processes like the selection of beneficiaries from data sourced at the community level, analysis of the number of children who fell ill after eating mid-day meals at school, and so on. The book is divided in two parts. The first part explains Prakalpa’s interest in numbers and figures and the second part narrates the story of transforming this interest into a company. I feel interest and expertise are two different things and should not be confused with each other. But this confusion is evident in the title.

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