Households' inflation expectations (IESH)
IESH = Inflation Expectations Survey of Households- How often
- Each new editionEvery two months, with the MPC decision
- Next release
- Fri 4 DecIn 22 days · 10:00 AM
September 2026, up from 9.4% in July 2026.
Events on this chart
Source: RBI, released 7 Oct 2026 · Chart: Clarity UPSC
- Previous
- 9.4%Jul 2026
- Highest
- 10.0%Sep 2026
- Lowest
- 8.0%Nov 2025
9 readings since May 2025.
Story
What urban households expect inflation to be a year from now.
What is happening now As of Sep 2026
In the September 2026 round, urban households' median expectation of inflation one year ahead rose to 10.0%, from 9.4% in July. A year earlier, in September 2025, it was 8.7%. The three-month-ahead expectation rose to 9.9%, and households' median perception of current inflation to 8.4%. The share of people expecting general prices to rise inched up. The survey ran on 10–20 September 2026 in 19 cities, with 5,987 responses.
When the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) raised the repo rate by 0.25 percentage point to 5.50% on 7 October 2026, its Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) noted "some evidence of elevated inflation expectations". Measured retail inflation was 5.54% in September 2026 and 6.09% in October.
Why it matters
When households expect prices to keep rising fast, they may buy early and ask for higher wages, and firms may raise prices sooner. Those choices can push inflation up in turn. When expectations stay close to the target, a short-lived price jump, such as a costly vegetable season, is less likely to spread.
The Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) says that against supply-driven inflation, monetary policy works mainly by curbing "second-round effects", such as rising inflation expectations and firms' pricing. It uses data on expectations to judge them, and the RBI releases this survey with each MPC decision.
What it is
The Inflation Expectations Survey of Households (IESH) of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) asks urban households how fast they think prices are rising now, and how fast they expect them to rise three months and one year ahead. This figure is the median one-year-ahead answer: half the respondents expect more, half expect less.
The survey runs every two months in 19 major cities, with about 6,000 respondents aged 21 and over. Each respondent picks a range in steps of 1 percentage point, from 0–1% up to 16% or more. Respondents also say whether they expect the prices of food, non-food items, household durables, housing and services to rise.
Expectations shape how households spend and save, and businesses use them to set prices and negotiate wages. Central banks that target inflation therefore try to keep expectations steady near the target, or "anchored". Households judge inflation from the prices of things they buy often, especially food and fuel, and their median expectation has tended to sit above measured Consumer Price Index (CPI) inflation.
Read this number
- The publisher
- The Reserve Bank of India is India's central bank. It manages money supply, bank regulation, the rupee and the country's foreign exchange reserves.
Terms on this page (3)
- CPI
- Consumer Price Index
- MPC
- Monetary Policy Committee
- RBI
- Reserve Bank of India
History
- 2005The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) starts the survey in September, with a round every quarter.
- 2016Extra rounds in November and May, from November 2016, make the survey two-monthly.
- 2018Two-stage random sampling replaces quota sampling.
Readings
| Period | Value | Status | Released |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sep 2026 | 10.0% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Jul 2026 | 9.4% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| May 2026 | 9.3% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Mar 2026 | 8.8% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Jan 2026 | 8.6% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Nov 2025 | 8.0% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Sep 2025 | 8.7% | Final | 7 Oct 2026 |
| Jul 2025 | 9.0% | Final | 5 Jun 2026 |
| May 2025 | 9.5% | Final | 5 Jun 2026 |
For UPSC
Know that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) runs this survey every two months in 19 cities and reports the median expectation. Expectations matter under inflation targeting because they feed into spending, pricing and wage decisions.