Consumer Price Index (CPI)

Consumer Price Index (CPI): monthly index and year-over-year inflation by state/UT, sector (rural/urban/combined), and item division/group/class/subclass/item. FINDING THE NATIONAL SERIES: every series carries a geography (the national all-India aggregate or one state/UT) and a sector (Rural, Urban or Combined). For any India-wide question (headline or any sub-segment), you MUST filter series_title ILIKE '%All India%' alongside the item term and the sector (usually '%Combined%' for the combined rural+urban sector). Do NOT use the raw title pattern '%State: All India%': the SQL tool matches title filters against human-friendly titles, so that pattern often returns nothing. For an exact match, filter the dimensions table instead: dimension_type = 'state' AND dimension_name = 'All India', dimension_type = 'sector' AND dimension_name = 'Combined', and dimension_type = 'base_year' AND dimension_name = '2024' (or '2012'). Without a geography filter the broad search returns mostly the 30+ state rows and the single national series is buried. NEVER chart a state series (e.g. Punjab, Telangana) as a stand-in for the national figure; if you cannot find the All India series for an item, widen the item term and retry rather than substituting a state. IMPORTANT - two base-year families exist as SEPARATE series (distinct series_ids): base 2012=100 and base 2024=100. MoSPI rebased 2012 to 2024 effective the Feb-2026 release, adopting COICOP-2018 (12 divisions replacing the old 6 groups). How to use them: (1) For a continuous modern timeline of headline/General CPI inflation, use the base-2024 'CPI (General)' series - in this database they run continuously from 2014 to the present (2025 inflation is back-computed from the base-2024 index, which MoSPI published continuously but left blank for inflation during the 2025 transition year). (2) The base-2012 'General' series END at Dec 2025 and are superseded - never present them as the latest. (3) The two bases are officially linkable ONLY at the General index level, using MoSPI's linking factors (Rural 0.5222, Urban 0.5320, Combined 0.5267): linked_index(t, base 2024) = index(t, base 2012) * LF for months before the 2025 overlap year. (4) Do NOT splice sub-aggregates across bases - divisions/groups/classes/items, and the old aggregate CFPI 'Consumer Food Price' versus the new COICOP 'Food and beverages' division, were reclassified by COICOP-2018 and are not comparable across the break; the old CFPI series ends Dec 2025 with no exact base-2024 twin. When a sub-aggregate time series is plotted over a window that crosses the 2012->2024 break, do NOT merge the two bases into a single line, but DO plot BOTH series on the same chart - the base-2012 series through its end (Dec 2025) and the base-2024 series from where it begins - as two clearly-labelled series, with an annotation noting the base change and any reclassification (e.g. the old 'Miscellaneous > Transport and Communication' grouping vs the new standalone COICOP 'Transport' division). This is a PER-CHART rule applied to EVERY chart independently, not satisfied by getting it right on one chart of a multi-chart report: (a) if a chart's x-axis window extends past Dec 2025, any CPI sub-aggregate line on it MUST carry both bases - never let a base-2012 CPI line die at Dec 2025 while other lines on the same chart (e.g. WPI) continue into 2026; add the base-2024 continuation. (b) Never render a CPI sub-aggregate chart whose ENTIRE window is the base-2024-only period (e.g. a few months of 2026) - that silently drops the prior year; either widen it to include the base-2012 series, or, if the base-2024 sub-component has no base-2012 twin (e.g. a granular CNG/tyres decomposition), do not present that short base-2024-only window as a standalone chart in a multi-year report. Note that base-2024 sub-aggregate inflation often starts only in 2026 (YoY needs 12 months of base-2024 index history), so the base-2024 series alone covers a misleadingly short window (sometimes ~4 months) and drops the prior year - never present the base-2024 sub-aggregate in isolation as the full picture; pair it with the base-2012 series so the reader sees the continuous trend across the break. Inflation is year-over-year: (index_t / index_t-12 - 1) * 100, computable directly from the internally-consistent base-2024 index rather than by stitching inflation prints across bases. Whenever an answer crosses the 2012/2024 boundary, tell the user the CPI base year was revised from 2012 to 2024. CROSS-SOURCE CHECK: the Reserve Bank of India dataset rbi-prices_wages (schema rbi) also carries the NSO/MoSPI CPI at all-India and state level for the Rural, Urban and Combined sectors (index and inflation; base-year families kept separate), but with less item detail than this dataset - not every MoSPI item has an RBI equivalent, and a missing RBI equivalent must not block an answer from this dataset. The two sources are refreshed independently, so neither is always newer. When an equivalent series exists in both, resolve the exact series you selected in each source and read its most recent non-null observation (WHERE series_id = '<id>' AND value IS NOT NULL ORDER BY time DESC LIMIT 1) before you present a value as the latest. MoSPI dates a month on its first day and RBI on its last day (2025-03-01 and 2025-03-31 are the same month); compare on date_trunc('month', time). Compare only equivalent series - same item, sector, geography, base year and measure - and never swap in a different sector or base year to obtain a newer month.

BASE-CHANGE NOTICE — India CPI (mospi_cpi): two base-year families exist as SEPARATE series with distinct series_ids. Base 2012=100 series (titles like 'CPI General | ...', old 6-group structure) END at the Feb-2026 rebase. Base 2024=100 series (titles starting 'CPI 2024', COICOP-2018 12-division structure) are current; the headline base-2024 'CPI (General)' runs continuously from 2014 to the present. If a chart's window spans the rebase: prefer the base-2024 family when it covers the item; otherwise fetch BOTH families now and keep each as its OWN labelled column on a shared time axis — never chain two bases into one continuous line or one re-indexed column, even when this series is only a comparator on the chart.

In SQL, this dataset is the rows of mospi.series with dataset_code = 'mospi_cpi'.Copy SQL to list series