One guide for each statistic that shapes Indian life. Each starts with the latest number, says plainly what it does and does not mean, and goes down to the states, the items and the households.
Prices
The cost of an ordinary shopping basket, measured monthly. The RBI's target, your salary's adversary, and the most argued-about number in Indian economics.
Read the guideThe cost of an ordinary shopping basket, measured monthly. The RBI's target, your salary's adversary, and the most argued-about number in Indian economics.
Factory-gate prices, a different basket from the CPI that measures a different thing. Why the two often part ways, and why both can be right.
Whether homes are getting dearer faster than everything else, which cities rose most, and why three official measures of house prices tell slightly different stories.
The size and speed of the whole economy, estimated quarterly: what growth is made of, from consumption to investment and government, and what the aggregate hides.
The monthly pulse of mining, manufacturing and electricity. Volatile, revised, and read far too literally.
India's manufacturing since 1960: the share of GDP that never took off, the slow climb toward high technology, and what factories sell abroad. Measured by the World Bank, not MoSPI.
The shop, the bus, the bank, the clinic and the software firm: how big India's services are, which are growing, what India sells to the world, and who does the work.
How big each state's economy is, how fast it grows, how much it produces per person, and what it runs on: farms, factories or services. From Sikkim and Goa to Bihar.
How much rice, wheat, pulses, oilseeds, sugarcane and cotton India grows, how much a hectare yields, which states grow what, the support prices the government sets, and the grain it buys and stores.
India's account with the world: the current account, foreign money in and out, reserves week by week, the rupee against a basket, external debt, and the money families send and receive.
Every shipment that crosses India's customs border, counted each month: what the country sells and buys, from crude oil and gold to phones and rice, and with whom.
The household budget of a country, averaged: what a person spends in a month, rung by rung of the ladder, and why the average is nobody's life.
The share of Indians living below the World Bank's international poverty lines, from every consumption survey since 1977-78: what each line means in rupees, why the numbers people quote differ, and what a decade without a survey did to what we know.
How many girls are born, how long women live, how far they study, whether they work and what they earn, who holds money, a seat or a judgeship, and how safe women are: every table of MoSPI's Women and Men in India, each kept to its own source.
India's population since 1950 and the UN's projections to 2100: how old the country is, when its working-age share peaks, how fast fertility fell, how long people live, and how fast its cities grow.
How much Indian households hold in savings accounts and fixed deposits, what interest those deposits earn, how long they are locked away, and who holds them.
What India's households, companies and government owe, as a share of the economy; the credit gap central banks watch for booms; how much income goes on repayments; and how India compares with China, the US and its peers.
What the RBI decides and why, every MPC vote since 2016, and how a change in the repo rate reaches your home loan, your fixed deposit and the government's borrowing.
Who borrows from India's banks, from farmers and factories to home buyers and gold-loan takers; how fast credit and money grow; where the loans go, state by state; and how the bad-loan cycle of 2015 to 2020 was cleaned up.
UPI, cards, NEFT, RTGS, cheques, ATMs and the e-rupee: how many payments Indians make each month, how big they are, and whether cash and cards are giving way.
Which banks hold India's money and lend it, how public and private banks traded places, which are healthiest and most profitable, how the bad-loan cycle of 2015 to 2020 was cleaned up, and the co-operative banks, NBFCs and development banks beside them.
What India's governments earn, spend, borrow and owe: the Centre's deficit month by month, every budget against what it delivered, how much of each rupee goes to interest, who lends to the government, and which states are stretched.
Where households put their money beyond the bank, from provident funds and insurance to mutual funds, shares and gold; how companies raise it from markets; how listed and unlisted companies are doing; and what professional forecasters expect.