How we verify

Sources

The MEA register. The Protocol Division of the Ministry of External Affairs publishes the official list of diplomatic missions, consular posts, honorary consulates and international organisations in India. It is our starting point for every page.
Credentials ceremonies. When a new ambassador or high commissioner takes up post, they present credentials to the President of India, and Rashtrapati Bhavan publishes the record. We use these records to confirm who heads a mission and to catch changes the register has not yet reflected.
The mission itself. Official websites of missions and foreign ministries, and information confirmed by a mission that manages its page.
Reputable reports. Dated reports from established news organisations, used only to confirm a name, never on their own.
Telephone confirmation. Where no written source exists, we call the mission on the number listed in the MEA register, never a number given by a third party, and record who confirmed the detail and when.
National days. The Blue Book of the UN Protocol and Liaison Service, where each country reports its own national day, checked against the national day lists published by the foreign ministries of Finland and Nepal, and against a country's own official act where a date has changed.

Rules

Addresses, telephone numbers, office hours and email addresses come from the MEA register and show the date we read it.
The name of a head of mission is shown when a credentials ceremony of the President of India names the person, or when the MEA register names them and a second source confirms it: the mission's own website (checked automatically every day), a telephone call to the MEA-listed number, or a dated official report. Until then the page says it is being verified.
Where a newer official record exists, such as a credentials ceremony held after the register was last updated, we show the newer record and say so.
Where sources disagree and neither is clearly newer, we show neither until the question is settled.
An official website is shown only if it sits on the government's or the mission's own domain and the page itself identifies the mission in New Delhi.
A national day is shown when the UN record and a foreign ministry list agree, or when the UN record is the only official source. Where they disagree, or the date changes every year, no date is shown.
Every fact carries its source and date on the page.

Keeping it current

Every month we read the full register again. Changed addresses, telephone numbers, office hours and email addresses are applied from it, since the register is the official source, and listed on What changed. A new head of mission in the register is shown as being verified until a second source agrees. New and removed register entries are reviewed by a person.
Every day we read new MEA publications (they become the dated developments on country pages) and the credentials ceremonies of the President of India.
Every week we check that mission websites, visa pages and consular pages still load. A visa or consular link that fails three weeks running is taken down until it is found again. We also check whether MEA has published a newer brief than the one a guide was written from; the guide then says so and lists the developments since its brief.
Every month we compare national days with UN Blue Book Online. A difference is checked by a person; nothing changes by itself.
Anyone can suggest a correction. We check each one against an official source before acting.

Country guides

Each country guide is written from the bilateral brief that the Ministry of External Affairs publishes on India's relations with that country. Every article names the brief and its date.
Facts come only from the brief. Figures are copied exactly as the brief gives them, with the period they refer to. We do not calculate totals, percentages or growth rates of our own.
Before an article is published, every number in it is checked automatically against the text of the brief. When an article is redrafted from a newer brief, every figure, date, number written in words and quotation in the draft must be found in that brief, and every name in that brief or the article as it stood, before it can go live; a draft that fails waits for a person.
Where a brief contradicts itself, or a figure is incomplete or looks wrong, the article leaves it out rather than guess.
Descriptions of a relationship are attributed to the brief. The guides do not express views of their own.
Contact details, heads of mission and national days are not taken from the briefs. They come from the verified register data described above and are shown live beside each article.

What we do not publish

Residential addresses, personal telephone numbers or details of diplomats' families, security arrangements or venues of private events, or anything a mission has not made public itself.