Overpass Turbo

Overpass Turbo is the easiest way to extract data from OpenStreetMap. Instead of downloading the entire planet, you write (or use the wizard to generate) queries that return exactly what you need: all schools within a city boundary, all water bodies in a watershed, all roads with a certain classification, all buildings tagged as hospitals. Results can be exported as GeoJSON, GPX, KML, or raw OSM XML. For Indian civic research, Overpass Turbo is transformative — it turns OSM from a map you look at into a database you can query for infrastructure analysis, service accessibility studies, and urban planning. The Overpass API that powers it is free and open, and the query language is well-documented.