Today, the Reserve Bank released the results of its bi-monthly Rural Consumer Confidence Survey (RCCS)^{1 2} for the first time. This survey is being conducted on regular basis since September 2023. In each round, the survey targets to cover 9,000 rural and semi urban households from all Indian states and three major union territories (UTs)³. The survey collects current perceptions (vis-à-vis a year ago) and one year ahead expectations of households on general economic situation, employment scenario, overall price situation, own income and spending from the households residing in the rural and semi-urban⁴ areas. This survey also collates information on households' current inflation perception and their expectation for the year ahead.

The latest round of the survey was conducted from March 1 to 10, 2025, encompassing 8,964 valid responses. An article detailing the sampling method, coverage and other related information of this survey will be published in the upcoming issue of RBI Bulletin.

Highlights:

1. Rural consumer confidence for the current period has improved in the last two rounds; the Current Situation Index (CSI)⁵ has registered an uptick owing to broad-based improvement across all survey parameters in the March 2025 round and crossed the neutral line (Chart 1; Tables 1, 2, 3, 5, 6 and 9).

2. The one-year-ahead outlook, as captured by the Future Expectations Index (FEI), continued to reflect optimism, with further improvement recorded in the latest survey round (Chart 1; Tables 9).

3. The share of rural households anticipating rise in prices and inflation has declined in the current round of survey for both the time horizons (Tables 3 and 4).

4. Consequently, households' current perception of inflation eased by 40 basis points to 6.6 per cent in March 2025 compared to the previous round. Their inflation expectations for the year ahead also moderated by 30 basis points to 9.3 per cent (Table 12).

Note: Please see the excel file for time series data.

¹ The rural consumer confidence survey covers both rural and semi-urban areas.

² The survey results reflect the respondents’ views, which are not necessarily shared by the Reserve Bank.

³ From September 2023, the RCCS covered responses from 24 states and 2 Union Territories. It was expanded to cover all 28 Indian States and 3 major Union Territories, viz., Delhi, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh in July 2024.

⁴ The classification of population groups i.e., Rural, Semi-Urban, Urban, and Metropolitan, is sourced from the Central Information System for Banking Infrastructure (CISBI) of the Reserve Bank of India. Areas with populations up to 9,999 are categorized as 'Rural', from 10,000 to 99,999 are under 'Semi-Urban', from 1,00,000 to 9,99,999 are under 'Urban', and populations of 10 lakh and above are designated as 'Metropolitan'. Urban surveys conducted by the RBI, namely CCS and IESH, cover only urban and metropolitan centres, while rural survey viz., RCCS is carried out in rural and semi-urban centres.

⁵ CSI and FEI are compiled with the net responses on five survey parameters viz., general economic situation, employment, income, price level and spending, for the current period (as compared with one year ago) and a year ahead, respectively. CSI and FEI = 100 + Average of Net Responses of the above parameters.

⁶ ‘Net response’ is the difference between the percentage of respondents reporting optimism and those reporting pessimisms. It ranges between -100 and 100. Any value greater than zero indicates expansion/ optimism and values less than zero indicate contraction/ pessimism.