Data and code for: Beyond Conventional Training: Decentralised Capacity Building for Conservation of Aquatic Species in the Ganga River Basin

De-identified participant records and analysis code for the study 'Beyond Conventional Training: Decentralised Capacity Building for Conservation of Aquatic Species in the Ganga River Basin' (submitted to Biodiversity and Conservation). The study evaluates the spearhead training-of-trainers programme run by the Wildlife Institute of India for the National Mission for Clean Ganga: 26 trainings between 2017 and 2025, 1,223 participant records from 116 districts in 11 states, five training modules, and the cascade that followed (48 cascade trainings, 3,437 participants; follow-up questionnaire with 2,608 respondents). Contents: (1) data/ - de-identified participant records (no names), the 26 trainings, the designation-to-sector map, cascade and survey counts, and a data dictionary, as CSV; (2) excel/ - the same data and all tables of the paper as Excel workbooks; (3) code/ - equivalent analysis scripts in R and in Python that reproduce every table, figure and in-text statistic (167 of 167 values match the paper), a script that compares the two, and the data-preparation script; (4) output/ and output_python/ - the results of the R and Python runs. See README.md for how to run the scripts and for the table numbering. Please do not attempt to identify individual participants. Funding: National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), grant B-02/2015-16/1259/NMCG-WII.