Data Storytelling – FAQs - By Shaku Atre- Series 1 Part 2 of 10

• The ancient Greek philosopher and scientist Aristotle advised us that a story should be based on a three-act structure:
• A beginning, called a setup, is the First Act.
• Q7: What is the First Act of our Story of Sunita?
• A7: Sunita confronts an incident leading to a dramatic situation – the turning point – life will never be the same again. What is a Data Story? Beginning- Set Up- First Act

• Q8: Who is the Protagonist? What does she confront when her life won’t be the same again?
• A8: The protagonist confronts an incident, and takes some action that weakens her. In this case, Sunita's only son becomes ill and is hospitalized. She needs money for a special treatment for her son. Sunita and people like her in India don’t have medical insurance. She takes a loan of Rupees 3, 00000 (three hundred thousand Rupees) from a loan shark at 8% interest rate.
• Q9: 8% interest rate per year?
• A9: One would think the 8% interest rate is per year.

Her interest rate was 8% per month!

How in the world is she going to be able to pay 24,000 Rupees a month? If she doesn’t pay the interest her home will be taken by the loan shark.

• Q9: How is she going to pay off interest AND her loan?
• A9: It is impossible for her to pay off even a small amount of the principal. She pays interest of 24,000 (Twenty four thousand) Rupees per month for a year by taking smaller loans at an even higher interest rate. She continues to get into more trouble because of these smaller loans besides the initial big loan.
• Q10: Where in the population of India does Sunita belong to?
• A10: Sunita belongs to the 30% of the poor class, where the financial balance is pretty precarious. Sunita is in big trouble.

Sunita keeps on “digging” a bigger hole and it gets more and more difficult for her to get out of it. This results into a Conflict – Second Act.

• Q11: How common is Sunita’s predicament? How many women like Sunita take loans from the loan sharks in the State of Maharashtra which has a population of 114.2 million people?
• A11:

• Q12: What happens to these 792,000 women?
• A12: Estimated 792/year commit suicide in Maharashtra. And the reason for their death in most of the cases is given as saris – the clothing – caught fire while cooking.

• In the next session “Data Storytelling FAQs – First Series by Shaku Atre- Part 3 of 10 “I will continue to cover as Aristotle proposed that a story should be based on a three-act structure, by using also a Business Case:
• A beginning, called a setup, is the First Act.
• An unsettling event creating a conflict is the Second Act.
• A resolution of the conflict and recreation of balance is the Third Act.