CPI inflation was 5.54% in September 2026. Food and beverages, 36.75% of what a household buys, supplied 2.71 points of it, about 49%. Personal care and jewellery, only 5.04% of the basket, supplied 0.74 points because its prices rose 13.8%.
Up from 0.78 in January 2026. Food prices rose 7.4% over the year to September 2026.
The other eleven parts together supplied 2.83 of the 5.54 points, with housing and fuel adding 0.47 despite a 17.67% weight, because their prices rose only 2.8%.
A 5.04% weight and 13.8% price rise. The division includes jewellery, so gold and silver prices move it.
A price rise matters to inflation in proportion to how much households spend on it. Each division's contribution is its weight times how much its index rose, divided by the headline index a year earlier, and the twelve contributions add up to headline inflation exactly. That is why a small item with a big price rise, like jewellery, can matter as much as a large item with a small one, like rent.
The weights are MoSPI's for the 2024-base index, the share of a typical household's spending at the base. As a check, weighting MoSPI's August 2026 division indices with them gives 108.74, the all-India index MoSPI published, and the breakdown reproduces the published inflation rate in each of the nine months shown.
The RBI's target is headline CPI, but it also watches “core” inflation, which leaves out food and fuel, as the clue to underlying pressure: food and fuel prices swing with the monsoon and world oil, and a higher repo rate does not change them quickly. The atlas does not compute core, which needs weights below the division level that this page does not have. What you can see here is how much of headline inflation comes from food on its own, and how much does not.
Rural and urban baskets differ, and so does each state's. This is all-India, rural and urban combined, on the 2024 base that began with January 2025 data, so inflation can be shown from January 2026, once a year-ago month exists. The atlas's CPI page carries the headline series and the earlier 2012 base.