An Analysis of Inter-State and Inter-Commodity Group Rural-Urban Consumer Price Indices in India:1983 to 1988-89

The basic objective of this paper is to make available to the research community a time series of representative rural and urban consumer price indices by commodity groups, at the state and all-India level from 1970-71 to 1988-89. The inter-temporal movement in the level of price indices and their average annual compound growth rate between 1983 and 1988-89 have been analysed along two dimensions: average across states and inter-state relative disparity as measured by the coefficient of variation. Major rural-urban and commodity group-specific empirical regularities emerging from our analysis are presented.