The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on October 09, 2026 has published a Working Paper titled “Data Gaps in State-Level Inflation: An Assessment for the Covid Period”, co-authored by Purnima Shaw and R. K. Sinha. The paper addresses the unavailability of official state-wise inflation figures for April and May 2020 and April and May 2021 due to disruptions in statistical data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The study uses granular data from RBI’s Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH), including consumers’ inflation perceptions, three-month-ahead inflation expectations and historical state-wise CPI-Urban inflation figures, to estimate inflation rates for the four missing months. The aggregated estimates closely align with the all-India official CPI inflation series and may support future research and analysis requiring state-level inflation time-series data under India’s inflation-targeting framework.
[Press Release: 2026-2027/1298]
