Inflation

Is inflation close to RBI's 4% target, and is it broad-based? Consumer prices from MoSPI on the 2024 base, linked to 2013 through MoSPI's official back series. Core CPI follows RBI's definition (excluding food and fuel).

Values for 2025 are the rates MoSPI published on the 2012 base; the 2024-base series begins in January 2025 and carries no inflation rates for that year.

What is driving inflation

All twelve divisions of the CPI basket, with their contributions →

Underlying inflation Original

Built from all 358 items in the CPI basket. Trimmed means drop the items with the most extreme price changes each month (the 5% measure drops 5% of the basket by weight, half from each end) and average the rest; the weighted median is the inflation rate of the item in the middle of the basket. Precious metals are gold and silver jewellery, which have risen far faster than other prices. These follow the definitions in RBI's Monetary Policy Report and reproduce its published values for January to August 2026 to the rounding. MoSPI does not publish item weights, so we recover them from its own indices; see Methods ("Underlying inflation"). Item data start in 2025, so these series start in January 2026.

How widespread is inflation?

A diffusion index shows whether inflation is concentrated in a few items or spreading across the basket. A rising share in the higher buckets alongside rising headline inflation means price pressures are broadening; a high headline rate with few items in the higher buckets points to a handful of items, such as a food or fuel shock.

Goods and services

Food watch

Classes and sub-classes of the CPI food basket, inflation as MoSPI publishes it; on the 2024 base these rates start in January 2026. Vegetable prices swing widely from month to month. Rainfall and reservoir data, planned for this section, are not yet available in a form we can read (IMD publishes them as images).

RBI's projections and what happened

Projections are whole-year CPI inflation as stated in each MPC resolution. Outturn: the average of the twelve monthly inflation rates as published, April to March (site calculation); RBI may compute its own annual figure differently.

Quarter by quarter

RBI's CPI inflation (y/y) projection for each quarter as stated in successive MPC resolutions; the meeting month is in brackets. Outturn: the average of the quarter's three monthly inflation rates as published at the time (2012 base in 2025, 2024 base from 2026). Source: RBI, MPC resolutions (in the minutes); MoSPI; site calculations.

How uncertain is RBI's path? Original

RBI publishes fan charts from its own models in the Monetary Policy Report. These bands are a different, simpler thing: they ask how wide the range around RBI's latest path would be if its errors were like its past ones at the same distance ahead (projection ± 0.67, 1.04 and 1.64 times the RMSE, i.e. assuming roughly normal errors). With about 25 past errors at each horizon, the bands are themselves approximate.

Momentum or base effect?

The 12-month inflation rate rises when prices go up this month (momentum) and when the same month last year saw small or falling price changes, which drop out of the comparison (base effect). In logs the split is exact: change in inflation = this month's price change − the price change in the same month a year earlier. Prices are not seasonally adjusted, so momentum can follow a seasonal pattern; the base effect from the same month carries that pattern too. Method: Methods.

Consumer prices, Sep 2026

Changes computed from the published indices; MoSPI's own headline rate for Sep 2026 is 5.54%. Not seasonally adjusted. Components below the general index start in January 2025 on the 2024 base, so their 12-month changes start in January 2026.

How core CPI is built Original

RBI defines core inflation as CPI excluding food and fuel, where "fuel" is electricity, gas and other fuels plus petrol, diesel and CNG for vehicles. On the 2024 base, food and beverages weigh 36.75, core 53.04 and fuel 10.21 (of 100). MoSPI does not publish the split of fuel between its two parts in machine-readable form, so we recover it from MoSPI's own indices: each division index is an exact weighted average of its components, and 21 months of data pin the weights down (5.37 and 4.84). Core is then the general index with food and fuel taken out. Checked against RBI's published core index: within 0.01 index points in every month RBI reports (June and July of 2025 and 2026).

Rural and urban

Wholesale prices

Office of the Economic Adviser, DPIIT; base 2022-23 from April 2023. WPI inflation for Sep 2026 is 11.39%, which matches OEA's press release for that month (checked on 28 Oct 2026; see the series' verification record on the Data page). The latest two months are provisional.

Households' inflation expectations

RBI's Inflation Expectations Survey of Households covers urban households in 19 cities; results are respondents' views, not RBI's. In every round we hold, perceived inflation was above measured CPI inflation, so the level matters less than the direction.

CPI for industrial workers

Labour Bureau's CPI-IW (2016=100): 5.57% in Sep 2026. History is built from each monthly press note (no archive is published), so the series is short. Series page

Still to come on this page

State-wise CPI is on the States page; a state map will follow. Checklist: docs/guidebook/05-pages/inflation.md.