The game's July 2026 starting point (turn 1) is initialised from a small set of real-world economic figures — listed below with exactly how solid each one is. From the moment you make your first decision, every number in the game is simulation output shaped by your choices, not a real reported figure, even where it reuses the same field name (GDP growth, inflation, etc).
actual Urban share, SC, ST, Muslim, Christian and Sikh shares by state come from the Census of India 2011 (rounded). Undivided Andhra Pradesh is used for AP and Telangana, and undivided J&K for J&K and Ladakh. The women's share (48.5%) comes from the 2011 sex ratio of 943. The turnout anchor is the Election Commission of India's 2024 general-election turnout of about 65.8%.
modelled baseline OBC share is not counted by the Census, so it uses the NSS 61st round (2004–05, about 41%) as an estimate. The 18–34 / 35+ split, the consumption-class split, issue salience, segment ideology, media diet and turnout modifiers are model assumptions. Their directions follow broad Lokniti-CSDS National Election Study patterns, but the magnitudes are the game's own. Census categories overlap (for example, many Scheduled Tribe members are Christian), so the model gives each person one community by scaling overlapping shares. Every source is listed on the Society screen.
actual The enemy strength index in a war is derived from each country's 2023 military expenditure from the SIPRI Military Expenditure Database (April 2024 release, current US$ billion, rounded), for the 15 largest spenders plus Pakistan. modelled baseline Every other country uses a clearly labelled model estimate: its World Bank GDP x 1.5% (close to the world median military burden). The War Room shows which of the two a war used. India's own strength comes from its in-game force rosters, readiness and doctrine, not from this table. The values are rounded; check them against the SIPRI database before citing them elsewhere.
actual What India sells to and buys from each country is India's own merchandise-trade report to the United Nations, from UN Comtrade (reporter India, all partners, HS "TOTAL", exports and imports, newest complete year, current US$). It is goods only: services such as IT exports are not included. The European Union's figure is the sum of its 27 member states, because the EU is not a Comtrade partner. Taiwan is not listed separately by the UN, and Liechtenstein and Monaco are counted with Switzerland and France; the game says so instead of showing a number. These figures are shown for reference only. The trade model that moves with your decisions keeps its own bilateral figures, and the Trade screen shows both side by side. The data is refreshed by running tools/build-india-trade.js.
The optional night-lights Earth behind the game and the Global Command map use NASA Earth Observatory imagery — the Blue Marble daytime composite and the Black Marble night-lights map (both U.S. government works, public domain) — obtained through the open-source three-globe example image set (MIT-licensed) and resized for the web. The files ship with the game (assets/globe/), so the globe works offline. It is decoration only; no game number depends on it.
Once you start playing, every economic, political, diplomatic, and military figure in RASHTRA is the output of this game's own simulation engine reacting to your decisions. None of it is a claim about what actually happened, is happening, or will happen in the real world — it's an alternate history the player builds one decision at a time.
The globe behind the game uses NASA Earth Observatory imagery, which is in the public domain: the daytime look is derived from the Blue Marble composite and the night look from the Black Marble city-lights map. The water mask comes from the same NASA-derived public-domain sources. The images were downscaled; they are visual atmosphere only and carry no game data. The textures were obtained via the MIT-licensed three-globe example assets.