CBFC Watch
An interactive explorer of cuts ordered by India's Central Board of Film Certification.
Overview
CBFC Watch is an open archive of film censorship decisions in India, tracking certification-level modifications and cuts across offices and content categories. It is designed as a public research interface rather than a static dataset dump.
Data and Sources
- CBFC certification records and modification notes (2017-2025) scraped incrementally from public board pages.
- Raw tables for metadata, modifications, and categories, then a joined processed dataset for analysis and publishing.
- Additional enhancement layers from scripted analysis, including content-type tags and duration normalization.
Workflow
- Ingestion scripts fetch certificates, category tables, and modification entries in append-only runs.
- Cleaning scripts standardize inconsistent formats (especially durations and timestamp fragments).
- Join and analysis stages produce a single analyzable output used by the public site and trend views.
Outputs
- Public web explorer with search, trends, office-level statistics, and topic filters.
- CSV-first data release for independent audits and downstream civic research workflows.
- Release artifacts maintained for transparent versioning and reproducibility.