Data is the fuel that powers research and innovation in AI. Any data scientist or developer's skills are rendered limited without the availability of rich, diverse and abundant datasets. The Union government has been striving to make open datasets available for the larger research community. The Open Government Data (OGD) is one of their foremost efforts to make data from ministries and government organisations readily available In addition, several researchers themselves have been collating cleaned datasets and making them available on public platforms and websites for the benefit of the entire community. Here are some datasets that can benefit the research community: 

Aadhar Metadata: This provides data on Aadhar Seeding Status of eligible households under the National Food Security Act (NFSA), 2013 of Madhya Pradesh, eligible households under PDS, total number of Aadhar numbers generated, enrolment application details and district wise details of Aadhar numbers generated. 

Census of India: This is by far, the largest available repository of statistical data on Indians, and can help researchers in sociology, anthropology, sociology and other disciplines. 

National Portal of India: This portal is developed with an objective to enable a single window access to information and services being provided by the various Indian Government entities. This Portal is a Mission Mode Project under the National E-Governance Plan, designed and developed by National Informatics Centre (NIC), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology, Government of India.

Ministry of Statistics & Programme Implementation (MoSPI) Dataset : The National Statistical Office under MoSPI is the nodal agency responsible for planning and facilitating the integrated development of the national statistical system and responds to the emerging data needs covering various socio-economic demographic challenges and issues. 

Gateway to India Earth Observation: This is an ISRO initiative that provides free satellite data, thematic datasets with a crowdsourcing technique. It also hosts some government data, enables 2D and 3D exploration of the earth, pest surveillance, disaster services and images of cities 

RBI Database: Launched by the Reserve Bank of India, this database has information relevant to researchers, data analysts covering markets, banking, savings, employment figures and more. 

Import Export Data: The Indian Customs Electronic Commerce/Electronic Data Interchange (EC/EDI) Gateway (ICEGATE) is a portal with e-filling services for trade and cargo carriers. It also has the Import Database (NIDB) and Export Commodity Database (ECDB) for Directorate of valuation that is being handled by ICEGATE.

Weather Data: Data on Indian weather indices is available here, and covers rainfall, temperature, pressure troughs, humidity, wind speed, solar radiation among others.