Ask the awkward ones first.

No. Most conversations start with a number of people and a free morning, not with a record in mind.

You do not need an organisation, a budget, or an idea — those are the easy parts to find. Working out whether something is a record at all, and whether it can be done safely at the size you want, is our half of the job. Plenty of attempts on this site began as “we have four hundred students and a Saturday in December”.

Schools and colleges most often. Then NGOs, civic bodies, companies, artists — and individuals.

• Schools and colleges — the most common starting point, and the easiest. The numbers, the hall and the assembly already exist.
• NGOs and causes — where the point is that people should know something, and the attempt is the reason the press turns up.
• Government and civic bodies — public initiatives where participation is genuine rather than attendance.
• Companies and institutions — a poor advertisement and an unusually good day out.
• Artists and craftspeople — where a practice scales to a hundred pairs of hands.
• One person — see the question about single-handed records below.

No. An individual can write in, and often does.

What an attempt needs is somebody on your side who answers the phone and can make a decision. Attempts fail on committees more often than they fail on numbers. A registration certificate has never been the thing standing in the way.

The record body may have its own requirements about who holds a record, and those are theirs rather than ours — we will tell you what they are once we know what you are attempting.

No. Most of what we do has been in and around Jaipur and Rajasthan, so that is where we know the venues and the authorities best — but the process is the same anywhere.

Distance changes the practicalities rather than the method. We are glad to hear from further afield, and will say plainly in the first conversation what being far away would mean for the attempt.

Yes, and it is the thing we need most. Attempts run on stewards, counters, markers and people who carry water. No fee, no audition.

Say so in the form and we will call you when something is being built near you. There is no obligation attached to saying yes once and no the next three times.

A reference appears on screen, and then somebody rings you. That is the whole of it.

The reference looks like JWRC- followed by six characters, chosen so it survives being read aloud on a phone. Keep it if it is convenient; it is not needed.

There is no automated sequence behind it, no mailing list, and no second email. Sending the form does not book a date or oblige either of us to go ahead — it starts a conversation. If you would rather skip the form altogether, the number is +91 80030 03000.

There is no single answer — it is set by the category, not by us. Some records need thousands on a ground; some need one person and a magnifying glass.

Tell us roughly how many you could gather and we will tell you what is within reach. “Roughly” is genuinely fine: the form takes “about 500” and “no idea yet” as readily as a number.

Record bodies charge their own fees for registration and adjudication, and those are published by them, not by us. Beyond that it depends on the venue, the scale and how much you are able to do yourselves.

We would rather talk it through than publish a number that would be wrong for your attempt. A school using its own ground and its own staff, and a public attempt needing a closed road and medical cover, are not the same question with a different total — they are different questions.

Registration and adjudication fees are the record body's, and they publish their own.

What those come to for your particular attempt, and how they are covered, is among the first things the conversation settles — before anything is promised to anybody. Nothing is charged for enquiring, and nothing is charged for the conversation.

It depends almost entirely on the record body and the size of the attempt. Some categories are adjudicated in weeks; others take months because the rules have to come back in writing first.

We will give you a realistic date in the first conversation rather than an optimistic one now. Schools should assume an attempt is planned a term ahead rather than a fortnight.

Yes. Several of the records on this site are one pair of hands and a great deal of patience.

The word Ram written 64,691 times on a single postcard; 11,111 miniatures of Lord Ganesha on one side of another; sixty-three world languages written in reverse. None of those needed a crowd — they needed somebody willing to keep going, and the same evidence trail as an attempt with three thousand people in it.

The drawn records are all of this kind.

By a paper trail built while the thing is happening: the count, independent stewards, the timing, adjudication against the record body's own criteria, and an evidence file assembled on the day. None of it can be put together afterwards.

• The count. Every item, person or tree counted as it enters, by people whose only job that day is counting, and recorded so it can be added up again later.
• The stewards. Independent observers positioned so that no part of the attempt is unwatched.
• The timing. Start and stop, on a clock everybody can see. For a continuous record this is the whole difficulty — one break anywhere and the attempt is over.
• The adjudication. The record body's own criteria, applied on the day by somebody empowered to say no.
• The evidence file. Photographs, video, steward statements, count sheets and timings, in one submission while everything is still fresh.
• The certificate. The smallest part of the work, and the only part most people ever see.

The full version is on the records page.

Independent observers. They are not participants, and they are not ours.

That independence is the point of them. A steward who is part of the attempt, or who works for the people running it, cannot vouch for it — and a record body that accepted such a statement would not be worth having a certificate from. It is also why volunteering as a steward is genuinely useful: the role exists precisely because it cannot be filled from inside.

We do — venue, authority, traffic, medical cover, insurance. That is on our side of the division of labour.

Your side is three things: the people, a date that works, and somebody who answers the phone. Everything else — feasibility, the application to the record body, permissions, rehearsal, the attempt itself and the evidence file — is ours.

Who is responsible for what is then put in writing before anybody gathers, in the agreement for that particular attempt. The division of labour is set out on the Take part page.

Both are planned for before the day, not improvised on it.

Weather, turnout and what happens if the numbers fall short are worked out at the rehearsal stage — markers, stewards, timings — which is where most attempts are genuinely won or lost. What the contingency actually is depends on the category: some can proceed at a smaller size and still count, and some cannot. We will tell you which yours is well before you invite anybody.

Some do. The rules are somebody else's and the adjudicator is independent, which is precisely what makes a record worth having.

A well-rehearsed attempt rarely fails on the day; it fails in the weeks before, which is where most of the work goes. Nobody will tell you an attempt is certain, and you should be wary of anybody who does.

A certificate from the record body, and the evidence file that earned it.

The certificate is what arrives at the end and the only part most people ever see. The more useful thing, honestly, is the day itself and the photographs of it — a few hundred people who spent a morning making something together tend to remember it longer than the piece of paper.

Usually yes, and it is settled in writing at the time rather than left to be argued about later.

Two things are somebody else's to grant, so ask before assuming either. The record body's name and marks are theirs and carry their own rules about how they may be used. The Carnival's name, photographs and writing are ours — see who owns what — and permission is easy to get and worth having.

Consent is arranged with the school and the parents, in writing, before the day.

Photography is part of the evidence a record body requires, so it is not optional — but who may be photographed, and where those photographs may appear, is agreed with the school and the parents at the time, under the DPDP Act's requirement for verifiable parental consent. This website never collects anything about a child.

If somebody appears in a photograph on this site and would rather not, it comes down. No explanation needed.

Record-keeping organisations — Guinness World Records, the Limca Book of Records and the India Book of Records among them.

Certification is theirs to give: each sets its own criteria and applies them on the day. Where a record carries a certificate, that certificate is the authority for it — not this website.

The pages here do not set out, record by record, which body certified which attempt. Please do not infer from a record's presence on this site that any particular organisation has certified it; ask instead, and the certificates can be shown.

Some may not, and we do not claim otherwise.

Records are by their nature superseded — that is what makes them worth attempting. A figure described here was a record when it was set and when the page was last revised. We do not monitor other people's attempts, so nothing on this site should be read as a claim that a record still stands today.

Yes. Ask, and they will be shown.

If you need certification details for a report, a school board, a funding application or a piece of journalism, say what you need and it will be sent. This is a reasonable thing to ask of anybody who tells you they have set a world record.

Because for three of the records there is no usable photograph, and a drawing that says so is better than a photograph that is not of the thing.

Where the page uses a drawing, it is a drawing — an illustration of what an object is. It is not offered as a picture of the object. The other records on that page carry real photographs of the events they are captioned as.

It is stored so somebody can ring you back, and used for nothing else.

It is not shared, not sold, and not added to a mailing list. This site runs no analytics, sets no cookies for readers, and loads no fonts or scripts from anybody else's server — which you can check in any browser's network tab.

What is kept, and for how long, is set out in full in the privacy notice.

Yes. One phone call is enough, no reason needed, and it costs nothing.

You can also have it corrected, ask what is held, or withdraw your consent altogether — the rights the DPDP Act gives you, and how to use them. Enquiries are deleted anyway twenty-four months after the last contact about them.