Times of Better Bharat

The Reserve Bank of India will conduct a three-day Variable Rate Reverse Repo (VRRR) auction on Friday, 25 September 2026, with a notified amount of ₹1,50,000 crore, according to a press release issued on Thursday. The auction window runs from 09:30 to 10:00, with reversal on Monday, 28 September.

A reverse repo auction absorbs liquidity from the banking system. The RBI said the decision followed "a review of current and evolving liquidity conditions".

The backdrop

The operation lands against figures the World Bank published for 2025: GDP of US$3.96 trillion, growth of 7.6% a year, consumer price inflation of 2.4% a year, an unemployment rate of 4.2% of the labour force, and net foreign direct investment inflows of US$39.1 billion. GNI per capita on the Atlas method is US$2,760, and GDP per capita at purchasing power parity is 11,748 international dollars.

The debt picture

The International Monetary Fund puts general government gross debt — Centre and states combined, on the definition it uses for debt-sustainability analysis — at 83.4% of GDP for 2026. That figure is contested. The Union Budget's central-government number is about 55.6% for FY2026-27. The two are not contradictory: they cover different entities. On the IMF's measure, the ratio is down from a peak near 89% in 2020.

Fiscal consolidation is set by the Union Budget and by state budgets. The liquidity stance is the Reserve Bank's.

A caveat still in circulation

Investors continue to cite India's rank of 63 of 190 on the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business index, up 14 places on 2019. That index no longer exists. The World Bank stopped publishing Doing Business in September 2021 after an audit found leadership had pressured staff to alter the 2018 and 2020 rankings. The figure is six years old.

What to watch

The auction on 25 September will indicate how much surplus liquidity the central bank judges the system to be carrying. The reversal on 28 September returns the funds to the banks.

India fell six places to 157th of 180 on Reporters Without Borders' 2026 World Press Freedom Index, released on 30 April 2026, with a score of 31.96 — down from 151st in 2025 and into the organisation's "very serious" band. RSF cites violence against journalists, concentrated ownership, and the use of defamation and national-security law. The Indian government has publicly disputed RSF's methodology and sample size.

The fall is the largest single move among the indices tracked here this cycle, and it runs against the direction of the corruption measure.

Corruption

Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index, released on 10 February 2026, moved India up five places to 91st of 182, with a score of 39, from 96th and 38 in 2024. It remains below the global average score of 42. India is ahead of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and behind China (43) and Bhutan (71). Some trackers still describe the index as covering 180 countries; the 2025 edition covered 182.

Enforcement continued this week in one narrow domain: the RBI imposed monetary penalties on three lenders in orders dated 22 and 24 September, for lapses in KYC, in the fair-practices code on charging of interest, and in auction procedure.

Democracy scores

The Economist Intelligence Unit's Democracy Index placed India 41st of 167 in 2023, up five places on 2022 and classified a "flawed democracy", tied with Poland. India's score peaked at 7.92 in 2014, when it ranked 27th, and fell to 6.61 in 2020, when it ranked 53rd.

V-Dem, via Our World in Data for 2025, scores India 0.38 of 1 for electoral democracy and 0.26 for liberal democracy, 0.46 for freedom of expression and 0.67 for judicial checks on government. Women's political participation is scored at 0.71, against 13.8% of lower-chamber seats held by women, on IPU data via Our World in Data.

Governance indicators

The World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2024, on a −2.5 to +2.5 scale, put India at 0.40 for government effectiveness, −0.04 for rule of law, −0.08 for voice and accountability, −0.10 for regulatory quality, −0.30 for control of corruption and −0.79 for political stability and absence of violence.

The pattern is not one-directional. Corruption perceptions improved, the democracy rank improved on its 2022 level, press freedom fell sharply, and the governance indicators sit close to the midpoint. The levers — media and defamation law, national-security statutes, judicial appointments and political finance — sit with Parliament and the courts, and each index is compiled by a different body on a different method.

The Defence Research and Development Organisation has signed its first high-value deep-technology project agreement under the Technology Development Fund, with a start-up, for the indigenous development of a 20 millikelvin dilution refrigerator for quantum applications, the government said in a release on Thursday.

The equipment sits upstream of quantum computing work, and the agreement is notable for its structure as much as its subject: a state research agency buying a component from a private start-up rather than building it in-house.

The ranking

WIPO's Global Innovation Index 2025 places India 38th of 139 economies, up one place on 2024 and ten places since 2020. India leads Central and Southern Asia, is the top-performing lower-middle-income economy in the index, and has over-performed relative to its income level for fifteen consecutive years. It ranks 52nd on innovation inputs but 32nd on outputs — meaning the system converts less research spending into more measured output than most peers. India ranks first in the world for ICT services exports.

Access underneath it

Adoption figures give the demand side of that picture. The World Bank's Global Findex puts account ownership at 89% of adults aged 15 and above, on 2024 data. The ITU, via the World Bank, counted 79.4 mobile subscriptions per 100 people in 2024, and 70% of the population using the internet in 2025.

Where the leverage sits

Innovation policy, public research funding and defence procurement are Union government functions, exercised through agencies including the DRDO. Access is shaped by the RBI's account and payments rules, by telecom licensing, and by state-level connectivity programmes.

Two readings can coexist. India's output rank, 32nd of 139, is stronger than its input rank, 52nd, and the country is the top performer in its income band. The same index still places it 38th overall, behind economies with smaller populations and, in several cases, smaller research budgets.

India ranks 130th of 193 on the UNDP's Human Development Index, with a score of 0.685 in the Human Development Report 2025, released on 6 May 2025 using 2023 data. That is up four places from 133rd and 0.676 the previous year. India remains in the "medium human development" band, just below the 0.700 threshold for "high". China ranks 78th.

The sharper number sits beside the headline one. Inequality cuts India's score by 30.7% — the steepest discount among its neighbours. That is a distribution finding, not an average-income one.

Nutrition, and a disputed index

The Global Hunger Index, published by Concern Worldwide and Welthungerhilfe in October 2025, ranks India 102nd of 123 with a score of 25.8, in the "serious" band — an improvement on 105th of 127 and 27.3 in 2024. Child wasting stands at 18.7%, among the highest in the report, with stunting at 32.9% and undernourishment at 12.0%. The Indian government has formally contested the methodology.

The underlying figures

Life expectancy at birth was 72.2 years, on World Bank data for 2024. Under-five mortality — the share of children dying before age five — was 3.6%, on UN IGME data via Our World in Data for 2019. GNI per capita on the Atlas method is US$2,760, and GDP per capita at purchasing power parity is 11,748 international dollars, both World Bank figures for 2025.

On Thursday, a government release set out support by the National Backward Classes Finance and Development Corporation for entrepreneurship and education among backward classes — the kind of intervention the inequality discount measures.

Who can change what

Average income has risen. The discount is about who reaches it. Nutrition, schooling, health and targeted credit are delivered jointly by Union ministries, state governments and specialist lenders such as the NBCFDC, and the index is compiled by UNDP from national and international data. India's rank moved four places in one year; the threshold above it is 0.700.

India ranks 176th of 177 countries on the Yale Center for Environmental Law and Policy's 2026 Environmental Performance Index, with a score of 22.46 — second from last, ahead only of Laos. The centre cites air quality, coal dependence and weak biodiversity protection.

The figure is contested in the same breath as it is published: the Environment Ministry rejected the 2022 edition outright as methodologically unsound. India's ten-year change in score is nonetheless positive, at +7.47, and in 2016 the index placed India 141st.

Air

IQAir's eighth World Air Quality Report, covering 2025, puts India sixth of 143 countries on population-weighted PM2.5 at 48.9 µg/m³ — close to ten times the WHO guideline of 5. That is an improvement on 2024, when India was fifth at 50.6. Delhi remains the world's most polluted capital at 82.2 µg/m³, itself a three-year low.

Power

Renewables supplied 24.1% of electricity generation, on Ember and Energy Institute data via Our World in Data for 2025. Solar generation was 196 TWh, on Energy Institute data via the same source.

Two government releases on Thursday touched the same ground. The Minister of State for Power and New and Renewable Energy, Shri Shripad Naik, held a bilateral meeting with a delegation from the European Parliament's committee on industry, research and energy. A separate release traced the shift in coal distribution from allocation to auction. A third marked the commercial launch of a bio-based biodegradable plastic under the BioE3 policy.

Who can change what

The generation mix is decided by the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy, the Ministry of Power and state electricity systems. Air quality sits with the Environment Ministry and state regulators. The index itself is published by Yale, and its method is disputed by the government.

Both things can be true at once: India's ten-year trend on this score is upward, and India remains near the bottom of the table against which it is measured.