Abstract：The Reserve Bank of India has launched three household surveys to gauge how people expect prices to move and how confident they feel about the economy, data that feeds directly into its bi-monthly monetary policy decisions. According to money.rediff.com, the central bank announced the surveys in Mumbai on Tuesday, with the next Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting scheduled for December 2 to 4, 2026.
The Reserve Bank of India has launched three household surveys to gauge how people expect prices to move and how confident they feel about the economy, data that feeds directly into its bi-monthly monetary policy decisions. According to money.rediff.com, the central bank announced the surveys in Mumbai on Tuesday, with the next Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) meeting scheduled for December 2 to 4, 2026.
ContentsWhat the Three Surveys Cover
The first is the November 2026 round of the Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH). The RBI said the survey aims at capturing subjective assessments on price movements and inflation, based on each household's individual consumption basket. In other words, rather than tracking official price indices alone, the central bank wants to know what ordinary people believe is happening to prices and what they expect next.
The IESH will be conducted across 19 cities: Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh, Chennai, Delhi, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Jammu, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi and Thiruvananthapuram.
The second exercise is the Urban Consumer Confidence Survey, which seeks qualitative responses from households on their sentiments about the general economic situation, the employment scenario, the price level, and their own income and spending. This survey is also conducted in the same 19 cities.
The third is the Rural Consumer Confidence Survey, which collects current perceptions and one-year-ahead expectations of households on the general economic situation, employment, the overall price situation, their own income and spending. It draws on households in rural and semi-urban areas across 31 states and Union Territories.
All three surveys are conducted regularly, and the RBI has said their results provide useful inputs for monetary policy. For readers new to central banking, the repo rate is the interest rate at which the RBI lends to commercial banks, and it is the main lever the MPC uses to influence borrowing costs, demand and ultimately inflation. Household surveys matter because expectations can shape behaviour: if people expect prices to keep rising quickly, they may spend or negotiate wages differently, which can feed into actual inflation.
Why Household Expectations Matter for Policy
The timing places these surveys just ahead of the December 2 to 4 MPC meeting, giving policymakers a fresh read on how households are experiencing prices and employment conditions. The surveys do not set policy on their own, but they sit alongside official inflation and growth data in the RBI's assessment.
That context matters because the RBI's most recent policy review, in October 2026, was framed around inflation that the central bank no longer considered benign. RBI Governor Sanjay Malhotra said at the time that “in light of the available data, it is clear that inflation and its outlook are not benign as they were last year.” The MPC unanimously raised the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.5 per cent from 5.25 per cent and changed its stance to “calibrated tightening”, a phrase signalling a readiness to tighten further if needed rather than a fixed path. The Standing Deposit Facility rate was set at 5.25 per cent, while the Marginal Standing Facility rate and the bank rate were set at 5.75 per cent.
The RBI raised its FY27 consumer price index (CPI) based inflation forecast to 5.2 per cent from 5 per cent, with quarterly projections of 4.9 per cent for Q2 FY27, 6 per cent for Q3, 5.7 per cent for Q4 and 5.6 per cent for Q1 FY28. It also raised its FY27 real GDP growth forecast by 40 basis points to 7.1 per cent from 6.7 per cent, with quarterly growth projected at 7.2 per cent for Q2 FY27, 6.9 per cent for Q3 and 6.8 per cent for Q4.
Malhotra explained that CPI inflation had risen to 4.8 per cent in August 2026 from 4.5 per cent in July, driven mainly by higher food and fuel inflation, while core inflation, which strips out food and fuel, also picked up. Food price increases had become more broad-based, with notable spikes in items such as sugar and onion, and the rise in fuel inflation largely reflected unfavourable base effects. Core inflation rose to 4.2 per cent, and core inflation excluding precious metals rose to 2.9 per cent. The weighted share of items in headline CPI recording inflation above 4 per cent had climbed steadily to about 37 per cent in August.
The Backdrop the Surveys Will Capture
The governor said the near-term inflation outlook pointed to continued supply-side pressures from a deficient monsoon, ongoing El Nino conditions and high energy and other commodity prices, with the pass-through still continuing. He also cited the re-escalation of the conflict in West Asia and sharp volatility in crude oil prices since the August 2026 MPC meeting as factors keeping the global economy in flux, while noting that global growth had remained resilient.
On growth, Malhotra said strong private consumption and fixed investment, a rebound in merchandise exports and sustained buoyancy in services exports had supported activity, with manufacturing growing at a robust pace. Looking ahead, he said global economic uncertainty would continue to have some bearing on domestic activity, and that deficient south-west monsoon and strong El Nino conditions posed risks to the agriculture outlook and rural demand, although healthy foodgrain buffers and proactive government interventions were expected to mitigate the impact. Continuing services momentum and broadly stable employment conditions were likely to support urban demand, he added, while strong capacity utilisation, robust credit flows and the government's infrastructure thrust were expected to sustain investment.
For forex beginners watching the rupee, the practical link is that interest rate decisions influence the return foreign investors can earn on Indian assets, which in turn can affect demand for the currency. The survey findings are one input among several that the MPC will weigh when it meets from December 2 to 4, and the RBI has not indicated how the results will shape that decision.
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