Economy
Is inflation under control, and is it broad or just food?
India's consumer prices rose 4.8% in the year to August 2026, above the RBI's 4% target. Food did less than half of it. Core inflation, excluding food and fuel, was 4.4%: the best single guide to next year's inflation in our tests.
Written for anyone who buys groceries, pays rent or holds a fixed deposit, and anyone who wants to know what the RBI is looking at. CPI to August 2026.
For now, but it is heating up.
Consumer prices were 4.8% higher in August 2026 than a year earlier, above the RBI's 4% target, inside its band. That is the highest since December 2024, after ten straight months of rises from 0.3% in October 2025.
Food did less than half of it. Food and drink prices rose 5.7% over the year and added 2.1 percentage points to headline inflation; fuel added 0.2 points and everything else 2.6 points. Prices outside food and fuel rose 4.4%, lifted by gold and silver jewellery: leave those out as well and the rest of the basket rose 3.3%.
Measures of underlying inflation, which set aside the most erratic prices, range from 3.3% to 6.5%; their median is 4.4%. The one to watch is core excluding food and fuel, at 4.4%. In a test we registered in advance it was the best single guide to inflation a year ahead; the median of the measures did 20% worse. Price rises are also spreading: 25% of the basket by weight rose faster than 6%, up from 10% in January.
The last three months ran hotter than the year: after seasonal adjustment, prices rose at an annualised 6.5%, against 4.8% over twelve months. So core inflation is above the RBI's 4% target, inside its band, while food and precious metals lift the headline, and recent months have run above the 6% ceiling.
The next CPI release, for October 2026, is due on 12 November 2026 (MoSPI's release calendar). This page's release note updates the same day.
Scorecard
Eight readings, each against its own history since its data begin. Two start only in January 2026, when the new basket began, so their history is too short to call anything usual.
usual range: the middle half of all readings latest the RBI's 4% target Each line runs from the lowest reading to the highest.
This month
0.8%rise in Aug 2026, seasonally adjusted
Prices rose 0.8% in August 2026 after allowing for the usual seasonal swing, more than the 0.1% of the month before. Over three months that is an annualised 6.5%, faster than the year's 4.8%.
This cycle
0.3% → 4.8%from Oct 2025 to Aug 2026
Inflation bottomed at 0.3% in October 2025, when food prices were falling, and has climbed since. It was last above 6% in October 2024.
This decade
4.6%average since Sept 2016
Since the RBI began targeting inflation in October 2016, inflation has averaged 4.6% and stayed inside the 2% to 6% band in 84 of 119 months. From 2004 to 2013, on an older index spliced in by India Data Hub, it averaged 8.0%.
How fast are prices rising?
Headline inflation is the rise in the price of the whole basket over twelve months. The RBI's job is to keep it near 4%, and inside 2% to 6%. Food is the volatile part: it fell 3.7% below its level of a year earlier in October 2025 and is now 5.7% above it.
Consumer price inflation: headline, food and the rest
Change over twelve months, monthly from 2012. MoSPI links headline across the 2026 change of basket; food and core change definition, so their lines break there.
How to read it. The bold line is headline inflation. Food swings far more than everything else and drags the headline with it; the line excluding food and fuel moves slowly and shows the trend.
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Is it just food?
Each bar splits headline inflation into what food, fuel and everything else added. In August 2026 food added 2.1 points of the 4.8%. A year earlier falling food prices took inflation down; now they push it up.
What added to inflation
Percentage points of headline inflation from each part, monthly from 2019. The bars add up to the headline rate.
How to read it. Bars above zero push inflation up, below zero pull it down. Food's bar swings; the bar for everything else changes slowly. In the new basket prepared meals count under restaurants.
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How broad are the price rises?
An average can hide a few big movers. This splits the 358 items in the basket by how fast their prices rose, weighted by what households spend on them. In August 2026 25% of the basket rose faster than 6% and 27% slower than 2%.
How the basket's price rises are spread
Share of the basket by weight, by how much each item's price rose over the year. Jan 2026, the first month the new basket gives yearly changes, against Aug 2026.
How to read it. Each bar is a share of household spending. Weight moving down the chart, toward the faster bands, means price rises are spreading beyond a few items.
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The trend underneath
Measures of underlying inflation disagree, so this chart shows them together. The line is the median of every reading each month; the band holds the middle half. In August 2026 they ran from 3.3% to 6.5%. Core excluding food and fuel, drawn alongside, has been the better guide to the year ahead.
Underlying inflation: the median of many measures
Monthly from 2017. Each reading is put on headline's footing by removing its past average gap to headline, where three years of that gap exist.
How to read it. When the median sits below the headline, a few items are lifting the headline. The band holds the middle half of the readings; when it is wide, the measures disagree and any one of them deserves less trust.
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What households expect
Expectations against what happened
Every two months the RBI asks households in cities what inflation they expect. In September 2026 the median answer for a year ahead was 10.0%. Households have long expected far more inflation than came: over 72 surveys since 2012, by 5.4 points on average.
What households expected, and what came
Median expectation in each RBI survey round, against CPI inflation twelve months after the survey.
How to read it. The gap between the lines is how far expectations overshot. Read the survey as a measure of how households feel about prices. As a forecast it has been poor.
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Rural and urban
Villages and towns buy different baskets: food is a larger share of rural spending. In August 2026 rural inflation was 5.2% and urban 4.3%, a gap of 0.9 points, with rural prices rising faster because food rose faster (5.9% in villages, 5.3% in towns).
Rural and urban inflation
Change over twelve months, monthly from 2012.
How to read it. The lines usually move together. Rural inflation runs ahead when food prices rise, and falls further when they drop.
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Inflation by state waits for MoSPI's state CPI on the new basket (state, sector and item indices from January 2025), which is being added to our data store. A states page appears here when it lands.
What the numbers can't tell you
- A new basket in 2026, linked only at the top
- MoSPI moved CPI to a 2024 base in February 2026, with new items, new weights and new groupings, and published a linked back series for the headline index only. Food, core and every item measure change definition in January 2026, so their lines break there and are never joined. Item measures have only months of history. More.
- Underlying is a range, not a number
- Every measure of underlying inflation makes a choice about what is noise. The median of many measures is less sensitive to any one choice. But in a test on the old basket's history, none of them, the median included, forecast inflation a year ahead better than plain core inflation. More.
- Seasonal adjustment is ours
- MoSPI does not publish seasonally adjusted CPI. The three- and six-month rates use seasonal factors estimated from the eight years before each one, on the old basket. Single months are noisy, so read the three-month rate for its direction.
- Not a forecast
- Nothing here predicts next month's print. Rising three-month inflation means recent months ran hot; it does not say they will continue.
- Prices people pay, not costs of living
- CPI prices a fixed basket. A household that buys more of what got cheaper, or rents rather than owns, faces a different inflation from the index.
- First prints revise
- MoSPI's latest month is provisional and is revised the next month, usually by a few hundredths. Every number here is as now published.
What changed
Headline inflation rose from 4.5% in July 2026 to 4.8% in August 2026. The biggest single push came from onion, whose contribution grew by 0.12 points; the biggest pull from tomato, down 0.18 points.
| Measure | Jul 2026 | Now | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headline | 4.5% | 4.8% | up 0.4 points |
| Food and drink | 5.2% | 5.7% | up 0.4 points |
| Excluding food and fuel | 4.2% | 4.4% | up 0.3 points |
| Excluding food, fuel, gold and silver | 3.1% | 3.3% | up 0.2 points |
| Weighted median of items | 3.1% | 3.5% | up 0.4 points |
| Basket rising faster than 6% | 23% | 25% | up 2 points |
| Three months, annualised | 4.9% | 6.5% | up 1.6 points |
The workings
The question
Data
Every chart has a table view, a CSV download and a link to its published JSON. Bundles are listed in data status.