About Haakh Batte
What We're Building
Jammu & Kashmir Open Data Platform
For the first time, J&K's public finance data is accessible to everyone — not locked in hundreds of PDF documents.
We're starting with budget data (2013-14 to 2025-26), but the vision is bigger: creating open data infrastructure that empowers citizens, journalists, and researchers to understand how their government works.
Why This Matters
Data isn't just numbers. When data is open, citizens can:
- ✓Understand how government money is spent
- ✓Compare spending across years and sectors
- ✓Make informed decisions
How We Did It
The Technical Challenge
J&K's budget documents are published as PDFs — 300+ documents, thousands of pages. You can't search across them. You can't analyse trends. You can't download clean data.
We Built:
- →Machine learning tools to extract data from PDFs
- →Verification systems to catch errors
- →Standardised classification to enable comparison
- →Open source code on GitHub so others can replicate this
The result: 200,000+ budget line items, spanning 13 years, now searchable and downloadable.
Our Principles
Transparency About Everything
We don't just provide data — we're transparent about what data we have (and don't have), quality issues and limitations, our extraction methods, and where errors might exist. This builds trust. Data alone isn't enough; users need to understand its boundaries.
Non-Partisan, Fact-Based
We provide clean, structured information and let users draw their own conclusions. We have no political agenda. The data speaks for itself.
Open Source & Collaborative
Our code is on GitHub. Our methods are documented. We welcome contributions, corrections, and suggestions. This work belongs to everyone.
Who We Are
Aashna Jamal
Public Finance Economist & Project Lead
A public finance economist with experience working inside government systems. As an ODI (Overseas Development Institute) Fellow, Aashna was embedded in finance ministries in Timor-Leste and Somalia, working on budget monitoring and transparency initiatives. This hands-on experience with government financial systems — how they work, where data lives, what users need — informs every aspect of this platform.
Haider Ali Punjabi
Software Developer
Developer building the technical infrastructure for Haakh Batte. Responsible for the data extraction pipeline, website, and open-source tooling.
The Vision: Beyond Budgets
We're starting with budget data because it's foundational. But the platform can expand to include:
- Development project tracking
- Procurement data
- Audit reports
- Service delivery outcomes
- Geographic data
The name is "Haakh Batte" — not just "JK Open Budget" — for a reason. This is about building data infrastructure that serves everyone.
Open Source
Our extraction code is on GitHub. That means:
- • Anyone can see how we built this
- • Researchers can verify our methods
- • Other states can replicate this approach
- • The community can improve the tools
We believe transparency work should itself be transparent.
View on GitHub ↗Get Involved
Funding & Sustainability
This project is currently grant-funded and volunteer-driven. We're working toward a sustainable model that keeps public data free and accessible.
If you're a foundation, research institution, or government agency interested in supporting open data work, get in touch.