Every question, by subject.
49 explainers on how India lives, each built from official data with every chart's numbers to download. Search them, or pick a subject.
Economy27
How big is India's economy? India produces about ₹357 lakh crore worth of goods and services, making it the 5th largest economy. Divide that output across 1.4 billion people and the average is only about ₹2.5 lakh a year. What does India's vehicle boom really look like? VAHAN registrations show India motorised at astonishing scale after 2003. But registrations are not sales, and the road filled mostly with two-wheelers while diesel faded, EVs arrived and income explained only part of the ride. Is foreign money really fleeing India? What FDI and FII numbers actually mean. India’s net FDI dropped from $43 billion in FY20 to under $1 billion in FY25, but gross inflows surged to an all-time high of $81 billion. The gap is repatriation and Indian firms investing abroad. How much foreign investment did India attract? What 56 years of data show. India received $38.9 billion of foreign direct investment in 2025 and climbed to eleventh in the world. That was equivalent to 3.1 per cent of the year's fixed investment. The high-water mark, in 2008, was 10.3 per cent. How much money did Indians send abroad under RBI's LRS? Travel dominates RBI's purpose table, but it is broader than holidays. Family support, education and investment make this a more complicated ledger. What does India's lower-middle-income label really measure? India is an economic giant because its output adds up across 1.46 billion people. Its income label divides national income by those people and converts it with the World Bank's Atlas method. The result is valid, narrow and easy to mistake for a verdict on Indian life. Why does everything keep getting more expensive? Inflation is normal, permanent, and uneven. This page uses 30 charts to explain what is happening to your money, why, and what you can actually do about it. How does India borrow? RBI/IDH gives the granular bank-credit map. BIS and IMF add the wider household-debt and credit-system context without replacing the Indian loan-product data. How does India trade with the world? From $1.3 bn in 1948 to $445 bn in exports by 2025, India's trade has multiplied. But a persistent goods deficit of $308 bn is offset by services and remittances. Who does India trade with? India's exports reached $291 bn in manufactures in 2024, but a yawning deficit with China and a surge in fuel imports shape the story. Is India a services superpower? Services earned $415 billion in 2025, just shy of $445 billion from goods, and India's share of world services exports is 4.4% – more than double its goods share. How competitive is India's trade with the world? Despite $445 billion in merchandise exports, India's share of world exports is just 1.7%, lower than in 1948. Tariffs remain high, and export complexity lags Asian peers. Who actually pays income tax in India? The zero-tax majority is not evasion but a deliberate policy choice that keeps lifting the nil-tax ceiling. The burden rests on a tiny apex. Has India’s industrial policy surge paid off? India nearly doubled protective industrial policy measures after COVID. The World Bank’s new report shows the tariffs are cutting imports, but the bill falls on households, and the promised manufacturing jobs remain elusive. How much does India spend on research, and is it enough? No, it's far below global leaders and its own 2% target. Yet India ranks third in research papers and sixth in patents. Here's how that paradox holds together. How innovative is India? India has climbed from the bottom half of the Global Innovation Index to its top third since 2015. The strength is in outputs and scale; the weakness is per person. Has India ended poverty? At $3 a day, about ₹58/day in 2021 PPP rupees, India's poverty rate is down to 5.3%. At $4.20, about ₹82/day, it is still 23.9%. The line you choose changes the answer. How much room do Indian states really have in their budgets? In 2023-24, states spent about Rs 40 lakh crore on running expenditure and Rs 7.5 lakh crore on capital outlay. Transfers supplied about 42% of revenue, interest and pensions took about a quarter, and education's budget share was lower than in the early 1990s. The Gulf shut. What did the 2026 oil shock actually cost India? India paid about $22.8 billion extra for the same four months of crude, and its cooking gas imports nearly halved. Retail petrol inflation was 7.5%. The difference went onto the government's books. Why did India stay poor while the rest of Asia got rich? Around 1950, India was no poorer than China or Korea, but by 2022 it was far behind because it underinvested in human capital, manufacturing, and exports while its neighbours systematically built each rung of the growth ladder. In progress How much gold does India have, and why can't we stop buying it? Behind the glitter: why Indian households hoard 30 times the RBI’s gold, and how duty swings and global prices shape a billion-dollar habit. In progress How fast is India's economy growing? Gross domestic product (GDP) expanded at a real rate of 6.5% in 2024, according to the World Bank. This is a measure of economic output after adjusting for inflation. Needs data How rich is the average Indian? GDP per capita is a rough measure of average economic output, but it hides huge inequalities. In progress How unequal is India? The same Indian top 1% takes 4.3% or 22.3% of income, depending on the lens. Consumption Gini is 25.5, income concentration is among the world’s highest, and wealth inequality is extreme. In progress How does India compare with China, the US, and the world? Compared with China, the US, and the world, India looks different across GDP, population, health, electricity, internet, cities, and women's work. In progress How much tax does India collect? Tax-to-GDP ratio measures government's share of the economy. India's ratio has declined over decades. In progress Why does the rupee keep falling, and does it actually make you poorer? It has moved from about ₹3.3 per dollar in 1947 to about ₹95 in mid-2026. But after adjusting for trade partners and inflation, the broad real rupee is only modestly below its 1994 level. In progressSociety15
How does India work? India's labour force is young and massive but mostly self-employed, informal, and stuck on farms. A low unemployment rate hides a crisis for educated youth, while women remain largely left out. Who works in India? Sex, caste, faith, marriage, schooling, and birthplace, not just the economy, decide whether you work, what you do, and what you earn. The headline jobless rate of 3.2% masks a labour market where most work is insecure and poorly paid. Does India really have the biggest jobs challenge in the world? Projections show about 238 million young Indians will reach working age by 2035, more than any other developing economy. How many Indians are in the workforce? India’s labour force has doubled since 1990, but participation lags behind neighbours, and unemployment hits youth and graduates hardest. Why is women's work participation so low? Rural women are driving a sharp recovery, but urban women and young women still struggle. The gender gap remains large. What share of Indians still work in agriculture? The share has fallen slowly from 63.1% in 1991, and even rose after 2019. Farming generates only 16.3% of GDP. How connected is India? Internet use reached 70% in 2025. Cheap mobile data, UPI, and wireless networks changed daily life, but gender and rural gaps remain. Why does India import so much edible oil? The dependency is not explained by one big number. Imports dwarf exports, three oils dominate the basket, domestic output is seed not oil, and the current sowing pickup still leaves the structural gap intact. What happens to a state's budget when it grows old? While Kerala and Tamil Nadu brace for the costs of ageing, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh still have young populations but far less money to prepare. How literate is India? World Bank data shows a steady increase, but the rate is still below universal literacy. Needs data How many years of schooling do Indians get? From under 6 years in 1971 to over 11 years in 2019, school life expectancy has nearly doubled. Secondary enrollment also rose from 24% to 80%. In progress Do Indians have safe drinking water? Access to basic services rose from 79.5% in 2000 to 95.7% in 2024, yet the indicator measures availability, not necessarily water quality. Needs data What share of the world is India? India's share of the world changes sharply depending on the denominator: people, economic output, or emissions. In progress When does India switch off the internet, and does it actually work? About 922 shutdowns since 2012, half in J&K, mostly preventive. Research shows shutdowns correlate with more violence, not less. The cost runs into billions. In progress How does India consume news? The famous trust figure of 39% comes from a survey of online, English-speaking Indians. The India that reads Hindi papers, forwards videos and has never answered an English online poll looks rather different. In progressClimate11
What India's AQI Can See, And What It Can't India's AQI is useful, but the public history underneath it is thinner than the dashboard feels. Are India's big cities getting hotter? Across 38 cities, 36 are warmer than the 1940s. But feels-like heat is rising faster than the thermometer, exposing Delhi and Amritsar, which look flat on dry temperature alone. Are India's heat deaths being counted? Official heat deaths are narrow labels. CRS and MCCD show why: in 2023, 97.2% of deaths were registered, but only 22.0% had medically certified causes. How much CO2 does India emit? But per person, the average Indian released just 2.2 tonnes. Coal dominates the total. Here are five key numbers to understand India's carbon dioxide emissions. How much does India emit per person? In 2024, India's per capita CO₂ was 2.2 tonnes, far below the world average and major emitters, but its 1.4 billion people push the national total to 3.19 billion tonnes. What does El Nino do to India? It roughly doubles the odds of a weak monsoon, yet many El Nino years still finished wet. The Indian Ocean, irrigation and food stocks all soften the blow. Is India's 2026 monsoon in trouble? IMD's June forecast gives a 60% chance of a deficient monsoon, driven by El Niño. But history shows El Niño loads the dice, not the outcome. The season is young. How bad is India's air today? The latest WAQI station snapshots show Mumbai highest among these five cities, followed by Delhi, Chennai, Kolkata, and Bengaluru. Needs data Is India a big emitter historically? From negligible levels in 1858, India's historical CO2 emissions have grown to over 66 billion tonnes, making it a significant contributor to atmospheric CO2. Needs data How is climate change changing India? Hotter nights, stickier heat, sharper rain and unequal cooling are already changing daily life. In progress El Niño is coming. Is India watching the right season? It is forecast to peak around October, after India's summer crop is already harvested. The rains it could still spoil are the ones falling now. In progressNo questions match that search yet.