When one thinks of ‘emerging India’ it is new high-rises and airports, call centres and shopping malls that come to mind. And yet as of 2020 more than 65% of India’s entire population lives in rural areas. That is 898 million people – more than the entire population of the USA and Europe combined.

Despite rapid strides over the last decade in empowering this vast rural population, the wellbeing of rural people continues to be a major area for policy and development intervention. Yet, rural Indians continue to be poorly understood with limited and disjointed data on their well-being. The newly formed Development Intelligence Unit (DIU) aims to fill those data gaps and at the same time create a planning and monitoring tool – the Rural Quality-of-Life (QOL) index.

DIU is a collaborative venture between the Transform Rural India Foundation and Sambodhi Research and Communications Private Limited. The Rural QOL Index will serve as a holistic measure of rural well-being, covering several development pillars and a wide array of indicators.