Key highlights

• Treat government infographics as starting material, not a finished headline.
• Always add time window + denominator + what changed (policy, base, seasonality).
• Use at least one “context chart” beside the hero chart so readers don’t get trapped in a single number.

January is when brands, investors, and families all ask the same question: “What’s the mood of the economy entering 2026?” Official government infographics are tempting because they compress complexity into a clean visual. The ethical problem is that visuals can also compress nuance out of existence.

A good newsroom habit is to publish charts in pairs: signal + guardrail. For example, an “external buffer” visual might spotlight that India’s foreign exchange reserves were USD 640.3 billion (end-Dec 2024) and were stated as sufficient to cover ~90% of external debt USD 711.8 billion (end-Sep 2024). India Budget The guardrail chart (or paragraph) should add the why now: reserves move with global risk appetite and capital flows; “coverage” isn’t the same thing as “immunity.”

Similarly, an energy-transition visual can highlight that renewable energy installed capacity reached 209.4 GW (Dec 2024)—about 47% of total installed capacity—while total installed capacity stood at 456.7 GW (Nov 2024). India Budget The guardrail is the editor’s job: scaling renewables isn’t just about capacity; the Survey itself flags constraints like storage and minerals, and the transition is full of trade-offs. India Budget

The pessimistic-but-useful rule for 2026: if a chart makes a reader feel certain, you probably owe them one more annotation.