The Aspirational India database explores the notion of consumer behaviour and of the latitude that households enjoy through ownership of assets or through the availability of basic amenities. This offering provides several kinds of data that throw light on household assets and amenities, household sentiments, their perceptions and decisions regarding purchase of assets or to make investments.

It provides data on ownership of a dozen assets by households. This in itself provides insights into the standard of living of Indian households.

Insights can be enriched by data on households' status on outstanding investments into financial instruments and on borrowing, which is also available in this database. The database provides an idea of the nature of assets and liabilities of households. But, it does not assign values to the assets or liabilities. While the assets are a listing of physical and financial assets, status on liabilities is provided by the purpose of borrowing and the source of borrowing.

The objective of this database is not to draw up a balance sheet of Indian households but to make an assessment of the kind of wealth of a household in terms of ownership of specific physical assets and exposure to financial assets.

The database goes much beyond ownership and elicits responses from households on their perceptions regarding purchase of assets and specifically their intentions to purchase assets, or invest in financial instruments. This is about perceptions and aspirations. About decisions to purchase new assets.

The received wisdom is that these are likely to be carefully deliberated decisions. (Psychology and Macroeconomics: Fifty Years of the Survey of Consumers, Richard Curtin, University of Michigan, 2000) The timing of these decisions reflect consumer expectations about the future prospects of the economy.

Aspirational India also delivers data on consumer sentiments. These are captured by administering the same five questions that are used by the University of Michigan in their Survey of Consumers. (http://www.sca.isr.umich.edu/)

In India aspirations and sentiments are likely to be impacted by access to basic amenities. This is relevant because basic amenities are not universal. Aspirational India therefore provides data on household outcomes on transport, electricity, water and toilet.

The Aspirational India database is available in the form of three snapshots of the entire sample every year since 2014. As of early 2020, this implied 18 complete Waves.

A co-terminus subscription to People of India DX is a pre-requisite to a subscription to the Aspirational India dataset.