The price of money.

For most of the twentieth century the Bank Rate was the RBI's signal, but it was changed rarely and credit was rationed by rule rather than priced. From 2000 the RBI began to steer the market with daily repo auctions under its Liquidity Adjustment Facility, and from May 2011 the repo rate became the single policy rate. Each step in the blue line is one decision.

The repo rate peaked in 2001 and again in 2008, and touched its lowest during the pandemic, when the RBI cut to support an economy in lockdown. The steps of 2022 took it up by two and a half points in nine months, as inflation rose after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.

When banks are short of money, the call rate rises towards the ceiling; when they have more than they need, it falls towards the floor. Where it sits inside the corridor tells you whether the RBI is keeping money tight or loose, whatever the repo rate says. In 2013 the RBI raised the ceiling sharply to defend the rupee, and the call rate followed it up. In 2020 and 2021 it flooded the system with money, and the call rate sat on the floor for two years.

The CRR is money a bank must keep with the RBI and cannot lend; it earns nothing. The SLR is the share of deposits a bank must hold in safe assets, mostly government bonds. In 1990-91 the two together claimed more than half of every rupee deposited, which kept the government's borrowing cheap and left less for everyone else. The reforms of the 1990s brought both down. The SLR still guarantees the government a captive buyer for its bonds.

Each bar is one meeting. Bars below the line are cuts, above it hikes; a ring is a meeting that left the rate unchanged. Most meetings change nothing. The committee usually moves in steps of 25 basis points, with larger steps in emergencies: 75 in March 2020, and 35 to 50 at a time in 2022.

The stance is the committee's signal about its next moves (accommodative, neutral, or withdrawing accommodation). The RBI does not record a vote on it.

Each row is a member, in the order they joined; each column is a meeting. Members serve fixed terms, so rows begin and end. A vote against can mean the member wanted a different direction, or the same direction by a different amount: in 2019, 2020 and June 2025 the minutes record members who agreed to cut but wanted a cut of another size. This table cannot say which way a "no" leaned; each member's statement in the minutes does.

The rates on new loans and new deposits react within months; the rates on the whole book lag, because most loans and deposits already on the books were priced earlier. Compare the gap between new and outstanding loans after the 2022 hikes and after the 2025 cuts. The gap between what banks charge and what they pay is their margin: it widens when deposits are slow to reprice.

A loan tied to an external benchmark, usually the repo rate, must be reset at least once every three months, so a change in the repo rate reaches it almost at once. A loan tied to the bank's MCLR resets only on the dates its agreement sets, often once a year, and follows the bank's own cost of funds. The rise of external benchmarks since October 2019 is why rate changes now reach borrowers faster than they did a decade ago.

Loans to large borrowers and loans backed by property cost least: export credit, large industry and home loans sit at the bottom. Unsecured loans to individuals cost most. Read the rates as averages across every bank and borrower: your own loan may be priced well above or below them.

This return counts every outstanding loan, not just new ones, so its rates move slowly. A credit card bill paid in full by the due date costs no interest; balances rolled over are charged rates like these.

The MCLR is each bank's own floor for loans not tied to an external benchmark, worked out from what the bank pays for its money. Public sector banks cluster tightly; private and foreign banks spread wider, because their funding and their borrowers differ more. A few foreign banks print rates far below the rest.

The band is what major banks put on their rate cards for deposits of more than a year. The blue line is what new deposits of every term actually earned on average, weighted by the money placed; it can sit below the band because it counts short deposits too. The savings account rate was set by the RBI until October 2011 and has been each bank's choice since.

Below zero, money in the bank loses buying power. These are rates after the inflation that actually happened, not the inflation savers expected when they put money in, which nobody measures monthly. Interest is also taxed at the saver's income-tax rate, so the real return after tax is lower again. The 2014 to 2024 part rests on the NSO's reconstruction of the new CPI for those years, not on prices it collected at the time.

Lenders usually want more to lend for longer, so the curve slopes up. A steep curve says markets expect rates or inflation to rise; a flat or falling one says they expect them to fall. The 10-year yield is the one to watch: banks, companies and state governments price their own long-term borrowing off it, and it sets what the government pays on the debt it adds each year.

A 91-day bill is the government's shortest regular borrowing; its yield tracks the repo rate and the call rate closely. The 10-year yield adds what the market expects of inflation and of government borrowing over a decade. When the two lines come close, markets expect rates to fall; when they spread apart, to rise.

In the 1990s banks borrowed from each other overnight with little help from the RBI, and a tight week could send the call rate past 40%. The securities scam of 1992 and the pressure on the rupee in 1995-96 and 1998 show as spikes; so do the year-end squeeze of March 2007 and the global crisis of 2008. Since the RBI set a firm corridor in 2011, the monthly average has stayed close to the policy rate, though single deals can still stray, as they did in 2013.

Every rupee governments borrow is a rupee banks, insurers and pension funds lend to them instead of to someone else. When borrowing is heavy, governments must offer higher yields to sell it, and every other long-term rate is priced off those yields. Gross borrowing includes new loans taken to repay old ones; the net figure, after repayments, is in the data download.

Primary dealers underwrite each auction: if bids fall short of the amount offered, or come only at yields the RBI rejects, the dealers must take up the rest. A devolvement is a signal that the market thinks the government is asking too little. Large devolvements cluster in years of stress: 2013-14, when foreign investors fled, and 2020-21, when pandemic borrowing swelled.

State loans carry no central guarantee, but markets treat them as nearly safe, because the RBI manages them and repays them from the states' accounts with it. So the gaps between states are small, a fraction of a percentage point, and they reflect how much a state borrows, how long it borrows for, and how its finances look. A state that borrows for longer pays more for that alone.

Until the 1990s the RBI fixed what banks could pay on deposits and charge on loans. Deposit rates above 10% look generous, but inflation then often ran in double digits too. Rates were freed in stages through the 1990s, and the line becomes a range across banks. Compare any rate here with the inflation of its time before calling it high or low.