Times of Better Bharat

The Reserve Bank of India will sell ₹25,000 crore of government securities on 13 October and conduct a three-day variable rate reverse repo (VRRR) auction of ₹2,00,000 crore on 12 October. Both releases attribute the decisions to a review of "current and evolving liquidity conditions".

The VRRR window runs from 09:30 to 10:00 on 12 October, with reversal on 15 October. The OMO sale is a multi-security auction using the multiple price method. The RBI will also auction 91-day, 182-day and 364-day Treasury bills on 14 October for a notified ₹8,000 crore, ₹8,000 crore and ₹7,000 crore respectively — ₹23,000 crore in total — all settling on 15 October.

The backdrop

The operations come against an economy the World Bank measured at US$3.96 trillion in 2025, growing 7.6% that year, with consumer price inflation of 2.4% per year (World Bank/MoSPI, 2025). The current account deficit stood at 0.5% of GDP in 2025, foreign-exchange reserves covered 7.85 months of imports and the external debt stock was US$716.5 billion in 2024, all on World Bank figures.

The RBI's weekly statistical supplement, published alongside the auction notices, puts loans and advances to state governments at ₹38,414 crore as on 2 October, against ₹8,590 crore on 25 September. A notification dated 9 October, issued under Section 42(1) of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934, allows scheduled banks to maintain a minimum cash reserve ratio of not less than 90% of the required CRR on all days of the reporting fortnight.

What the last auction priced

At the preceding government stock auction, the RBI accepted the full notified ₹23,000 crore of 7.06% GS 2041 at an implicit cut-off yield of 7.4898%, and the full ₹13,000 crore of 7.43% GS 2076 at 7.8015%, with no devolvement on primary dealers, according to the auction results.

What moves next

The notified amounts are the central bank's, and so is the assessment behind them. The VRRR absorbs funds from the banking system for three days; the OMO sale transfers securities out of the RBI's book permanently. Both appear in the weekly figures the RBI publishes, where the direction of travel — how much liquidity is actually withdrawn against how much was offered — will be visible.

India's score on Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index rose to 39 in the 2025 edition, released on 10 February 2026, from 38 a year earlier, taking the country from 96th to 91st of the 182 countries assessed. The global average score was 42. India ranks ahead of Sri Lanka, Nepal, Pakistan and Bangladesh on the same index, and behind China (43) and Bhutan (71).

The coverage is itself disputed: some trackers still describe the index as covering 180 countries, while the 2025 edition covered 182.

Other measures point the other way. On the World Bank's Worldwide Governance Indicators for 2025, control of corruption reads -0.28 on a scale running from -2.5 to +2.5, with regulatory quality at -0.17, rule of law -0.13 and voice and accountability -0.15. Government effectiveness is the exception at +0.50; political stability and absence of violence is the weakest reading at -0.61.

V-Dem's 2025 figures, published via Our World in Data, put political corruption at 0.68, public sector corruption at 0.69 and executive corruption at 0.69 — each on a 0–1 scale where higher is worse.

The campaigns under way

The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting has launched Special Campaign 6.0, which it describes as a nationwide drive to improve cleanliness and reduce pending cases. The Revenue Department and its subordinate offices are observing the same campaign from 2 to 31 October 2026, and NITI Aayog ran Swachhata Hi Seva 2026 from 17 September to 2 October 2026.

What would have to move

The three indices are compiled by three separate organisations — Transparency International, the World Bank and V-Dem — on different methods, and they are not measuring the same thing. What they have in common is that all three moved little in the latest editions: the CPI score shifted by one point, and the World Bank and V-Dem readings, both for 2025, sit where the scale puts them.

Pendency clearance is within the administrative control of the departments running the campaign, and they report their own progress against it. Perceptions of corruption respond more slowly, to patterns of enforcement and prosecution across state and central agencies. The gap between a one-point score improvement and a control-of-corruption reading of -0.28 is the measure of how much of that work remains.

The National Statistical Office has issued draft guidelines for compiling gross state domestic product estimates on the expenditure method, with 2022-23 as the base year. The Reserve Bank of India, in the same week, placed Working Paper No. 01/2026 on its website: "Data Gaps in State-Level Inflation: An Assessment for the Covid Period", co-authored by Purnima Shaw and R. K. Sinha.

The RBI paper records that the collection and compilation of official statistics was affected during the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Why the base year matters

National accounts are the frame against which everything else is measured. The World Bank puts India's GDP at US$3.96 trillion in 2025, growing 7.6% that year. Tax revenue was 6.9% of GDP in 2022, on the same source. State-level estimates are built inside that frame, and a base-year revision changes the level from which every subsequent growth rate in each state is calculated.

A second transparency measure, the International Budget Partnership's Open Budget Index, scored India 44 out of 100 in its 2025 edition. That edition covered only 82 countries, against 125 in 2023, and IBP states that its 2025 global averages are not comparable with 2023.

Two different gaps

The NSO draft addresses how state output is constructed; the RBI paper addresses what was missing during a specific disruption. They are separate exercises by separate institutions — the statistical office under the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, and the central bank — and neither claims the underlying problem is solved.

The base-year revision is a technical process run by the statistical office, which will decide the final methodology after the draft stage. The inflation-gap assessment is a research paper, and its remedy lies partly with the state-level agencies that collect price data and partly with the central statistical system that compiles it. Both point the same way: the estimates that policy and fiscal transfers rely on are only as current as the data collection behind them.

India's median mobile download speed was 128.2 Mbps in the three months to August 2026, ranking 32nd of 102 countries on Ookla's Speedtest Global Index — down seven places from the same period a year earlier. The reading is a rolling three-month value, and Ookla limits mobile results to devices with modern chipsets.

Quality checks continue on the ground. The Telecom Regulatory Authority of India conducted mobile network quality-of-service tests in Bilaspur and Janjgir-Champa under the Madhya Pradesh licensed service area in August 2026, the government said. Separately, India has welcomed a proposal for a joint International Telecommunication Union trial on cross-border telecom fraud, according to the Minister of State for Communications.

Reach

Mobile subscriptions stood at 79.4 per 100 people in 2024 (ITU, via the World Bank), and 70% of the population used the internet in 2025 (World Bank/ITU). Fixed broadband remains the weak link at 3.2 subscriptions per 100 people in 2024, on the same source.

Price

Cost is India's clear strength. At US$0.16 per 1GB, the country ranked 7th of 237 in Cable.co.uk's worldwide data-pricing study, the latest edition, based on plans gathered between 5 July and 6 September 2023 and published that September — two places lower than the edition before it.

Security

On the ITU's Global Cybersecurity Index 2024, India scores 98.49 out of 100 and sits in Tier 1, "role-modelling", one of 46 countries in that tier among 194 assessed. The 2024 edition publishes no ranks. ITU prints only the pillar scores — legal 20, technical 20, organizational 18.49, capacity development 20 and cooperation 20 — rather than an overall figure.

What the numbers show

Three things move in different directions. Cheapest-tier pricing is settled; the speed ranking slipped seven places in twelve months; coverage of fixed broadband stays in low single digits. TRAI's drive tests are the regulator's own check on what operators deliver in named cities, and the proposed ITU trial would test whether cross-border fraud can be traced across cooperating networks. Both sit with the regulator and the department of telecommunications respectively; the speed and coverage figures are compiled by Ookla, Cable.co.uk and the ITU, not by the government.

Of India's prison population, 72.6% were pre-trial detainees as on 31 December 2024, according to the World Prison Brief, whose figures are sourced from the National Crime Records Bureau. The prison population rate was 37 per 100,000 people in 2023, on the same source via Our World in Data.

The National Human Rights Commission marks its 33rd foundation day on 12 October 2026.

The crime figures

NCRB data for 2022 put crime against women at 66.4 cases per lakh women — 4,45,256 cases, or about 51 FIRs an hour — with cruelty by a husband or his relatives at 31.4% of the total, kidnapping and abduction at 19.2%, assault with intent to outrage modesty at 18.7% and rape at 7.1%. Delhi's rate was 144.4, more than double the national figure. These numbers are [CONTESTED].

Crime against children stood at 39.9 cases per lakh children in 2023, also on NCRB data — 1,77,335 cases, up 9.2% on 2022 — with kidnapping and abduction accounting for 45% and POCSO offences 38.2%, together over four fifths of the total. That figure is [CONTESTED] as well.

What the numbers describe

The pre-trial share is the one figure here that is administrative rather than survey-based: it counts people in custody who have not been convicted. Reducing it depends on the pace of investigation, prosecution and court disposal, and the NCRB publishes the underlying data that the World Prison Brief republishes.

The crime-against-women and crime-against-children rates carry the [CONTESTED] label because recorded cases reflect both how much crime occurs and how much is reported to and registered by the police; a rise in registered cases is not the same as a rise in offences. The NHRC, which turns 33 on 12 October, has a statutory mandate to recommend action on custodial and rights-related matters, while the police and courts hold the levers on the pre-trial figure. Both are long-standing problems — the pre-trial share and the reporting gap — that have outlasted several governments.

India fell thirteen places to 23rd of 67 on the Climate Change Performance Index 2026, scoring 61.31 out of 100 and dropping from the "high" to the "medium" performer category, according to Germanwatch, the NewClimate Institute and Climate Action Network International. The index leaves its top three places empty by design.

In the same period, the National Highways Authority of India said it will install retrofit emission control equipment on 25 diesel generator sets on the Dwarka Expressway.

The air record

On IQAir's 8th World Air Quality Report, India was the sixth most polluted country of 143 by 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 5th at 50.6. Delhi remains the world's most polluted capital at 82.2 µg/m³, itself a three-year low.

The Environmental Performance Index 2026 from Yale places India 176th of 177 with a score of 22.46, second from last and ahead only of Laos, citing air quality, coal dependence and weak biodiversity protection. That figure is [CONTESTED]: the Environment Ministry rejected the 2022 edition outright as methodologically unsound. India's ten-year change in score is positive at +7.47, on the same source.

Energy and carbon

Renewables supplied 24.1% of electricity generation in 2025 (Ember and Energy Institute, via Our World in Data), with solar generating 196 TWh. India emitted 2.17 tonnes of CO₂ per person and 3,153.83 million tonnes in total in 2024, on World Bank figures, with forest cover at 24.4% of land area and tree-cover loss of 1,25,678 hectares a year.

Where the levers sit

The NHAI retrofit covers 25 generator sets on one expressway. The two pillars the CCPI and EPI point to — coal dependence and urban air quality — are questions of energy and pollution policy rather than highway management, and the EPI's publisher and the Environment Ministry remain in open disagreement over the method. India's own trajectory is mixed: a marginal PM2.5 improvement and a positive ten-year EPI score change, against a thirteen-place fall on the CCPI and renewables at under a quarter of generation.