Defining ‘open data’ to mean insights from accessible data becoming available to elected decision makers within governance as structured inputs, this paper sets out the status in India in a study done in 2008-10 in the case of Madhubani district in the state of Bihar for district economic planning. The paper demonstrates that a large amount of accessible data can generate highly structured inputs, such as village level digital maps and comparative analysis to set out sectoral, temporal and geographical dimensions of the changes in the local economy. It also identifies disconnects within institutional and political functioning of governance that impedes such opening of data to structured decision making in local governance.