Editorial Policy & Disclaimer
Masala Deutsch publishes data-led analysis of India's trade, energy, industrial and agricultural policy, read from primary official sources. This page sets out how the articles are made, what standards they are held to, what they are not, and how errors are handled. It is the single place these commitments live, so that every article can be short about them and this page can be complete.
In one paragraph.
Every article is researched, written, edited and published by the author, Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, a chemical engineer and former investment-promotion officer with more than a decade in the energy sector. AI tools are used as a research and drafting assistant — to read long documents, cross-check figures, and draft prose — under the author's direction and review, in the same way a researcher uses a search engine or a spreadsheet. Every figure is meant to trace to a named primary source; where a source could not be read directly, the article says so and rates its own confidence. Nothing here is financial, legal, or investment advice.
Authorship and how AI is used
The author chooses every topic, sets the question each article answers, decides which sources count, checks the numbers, and takes responsibility for what is published. AI assistants (currently Anthropic's Claude) are used for research support: reading government press releases, parliamentary replies, gazette notifications, regulators' data releases, and academic papers; extracting and cross-tabulating figures; rebuilding datasets from their published components to verify totals; and drafting text from the sources gathered. Drafts are reviewed and edited by the author before publication. Articles carry a short disclosure line noting this assistance; that line points here for the full policy.
Two things AI assistance is not used for on this site: it is not used to generate articles at volume on topics the author has not investigated, and it is not used to paraphrase other publications' reporting as if it were original analysis. Where an article draws on press coverage, it names the outlet; where it draws on a primary document, it names the document, its date and, wherever possible, its reference number.
Sourcing and verification standards
Preference is given to primary sources: Press Information Bureau releases, Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha replies, the Gazette of India, RBI, MoSPI, DGCI&S trade statistics, PNGRB and PPAC data, PARIVESH clearance records, and company filings. Figures carry their vintage (the period they describe) and, where it matters, the date they were retrieved. Estimates and press-reported numbers are labelled as such. Where two credible sources disagree, both figures are shown with their dates rather than one being silently chosen.
Many articles include a section headed "What this piece verified itself" or "Sources and caveats" that states, for that article specifically, which claims rest on a document read in full, which rest on search-indexed summaries of a document that could not be fetched directly, and which are single-sourced. Readers are encouraged to weight claims accordingly. A recurring, honestly-stated limitation is that several Indian government domains cannot be fetched directly from the research environment used; where that affected an article, the article names the blocked sources.
Corrections
Errors are corrected visibly, never silently. When a published figure or claim is found to be wrong, the article is updated and the change is noted either inline or in the article's caveats section; the site's version history records the change with a note. Where an earlier article on this site turns out to be less precise than a later one on the same subject, the later article says so and links to it. To report an error, email the author (see Contact); corrections are typically made within a few days.
What this site is not
Nothing on this site is financial, investment, tax, legal, or professional advice, and nothing should be relied on as such. Articles analyse public policy and public data; they do not recommend buying or selling any security, commodity or product, and the author holds no undisclosed position in any company discussed. Where an article models scenarios (for example, ethanol feedstock demand or grain surpluses), the models are illustrative arithmetic on published figures, not forecasts. Anyone making a real decision — a tender bid, a procurement plan, a land or legal matter, an investment — should consult the relevant ministry, regulator, or a qualified professional, and verify any figure against the primary source the article cites.
Accuracy of AI-assisted text
AI-assisted drafting can occasionally misstate a figure, misattribute a quotation, or conflate two similar documents even when working from real source material. The author's review is designed to catch this, and articles disclose the confidence tier of their claims for that reason; but no process is perfect. If a figure matters to a decision you are making, check it against the linked primary source. If you find an error, please report it — it will be corrected and acknowledged.
Affiliate links and advertising
This site displays advertising through Google AdSense and participates in the Amazon Associates Programme; some articles and the "Books & things" page contain affiliate links, and the site earns a commission on qualifying purchases at no cost to the reader. Every recommended book or product was chosen by the author; none was supplied free or sponsored, and advertising has no influence on which topics are covered or what the articles conclude. Details of the data these services collect are in the Privacy Policy.
Copyright and reuse
Text and original charts on this site are © the author. Short quotations with attribution and a link are welcome. Government documents, statistics and gazette notifications quoted or linked are in the public domain or reproduced under fair dealing for the purpose of review and analysis; the underlying data belongs to its publishers. Third-party charts, tables or excerpts are credited where used.
Accessibility
Each article carries an accessibility bar with text-size controls and a read-aloud function that uses your browser's built-in speech synthesis. Articles are written in plain English with defined acronyms, and tables are marked up as tables so screen readers can navigate them. Readers who use assistive technology may also find these independent services useful: Jyoti AI (assistive reading for the visually impaired), Trestle Labs Kibo (multilingual document reading), and Let's Talk Sign (sign-language communication for the deaf and hard of hearing). They are external services with no commercial relationship to this site.
Questions about this policy: umashankartd1991@gmail.com. See also: About · Contact · Privacy Policy.
