Statistical Insight on MeghRaj in India from 2015 to 2026

The data on India’s MeghRaj initiative, the government’s cloud computing platform, reveals a consistent and substantial growth trajectory spanning over a decade. From its early implementation in 2015-16 with just 342 departments onboarded, the platform has expanded its reach nearly six-fold to incorporate 2,081 departments by 2025-26. This steady departmental integration demonstrates the government’s committed approach to digital transformation across its administrative machinery, with particularly notable acceleration between 2023-24 and 2024-25 when coverage jumped from 1,730 to 2,055 departments—the largest single-year increase in the dataset.

The scaling of virtual machine (VM) infrastructure tells an equally impressive story of capacity building, growing from 6,134 VMS in 2015-16 to 29,399 by 2025-26—a nearly five-fold increase that underscores the substantial computational resources being deployed to support e-governance initiatives. The growth pattern of VMS closely mirrors departmental adoption, suggesting a well-coordinated expansion strategy that maintains appropriate infrastructure scaling in line with increasing demands. However, there are subtle differences in the growth curves, with VM growth showing a temporary plateau between 2022-24 before resuming strong expansion in 2024-25.

Analysing the ratio between departments and VMS provides insight into resource allocation patterns. In 2015-16, the system averaged approximately 18 VMS per department, while by 2025-26, this ratio had decreased to about 14 VMS per department. This declining ratio might indicate several possibilities: improved VM efficiency allowing more services per machine, consolidation of services through better architecture, or perhaps a shift toward more lightweight applications as departmental adoption expanded beyond core computing-intensive functions to broader administrative applications.

The data illustrates India’s strategic commitment to cloud computing as the foundation for digital governance, with MeghRaj serving as the technological backbone for numerous e-governance initiatives. The sustained growth across both metrics, even into the projected fiscal year 2025-26, indicates continued investment in digital infrastructure and suggests that cloud adoption remains central to India’s governance modernisation strategy. This consistent expansion of both departmental coverage and computing resources demonstrates a successful implementation of the “Cloud First” policy approach, enabling government entities to leverage shared infrastructure rather than developing siloed IT systems, ultimately enhancing efficiency, security, and service delivery capabilities across the public sector.