Pricele #89: Milk (1 litre) in India 🇮🇳
The puzzle for 27 September 2026 asked what a litre of milk costs in India. Here is the answer and the context behind it.
The answer
Milk (1 litre) · India
$0.64
61.12 INR
About 15 minutes of the average local wage buys a litre of milk.
That makes it the cheapest litre of milk of all 32 countries in the game.
Source: Numbeo (crowd-sourced), retrieved 2026-08.
About milk
Milk is heavy, perishable and awkward to ship, so it is almost always produced close to where it is drunk. That makes its price a read on local farming costs rather than world markets, and in much of the EU on agricultural subsidies, which push retail prices below what production alone would imply.
Where India sits
Of the 32 countries priced for milk, India ranks #32 from the top at $0.64, 58% below the median of $1.54.
India has the cheapest Big Mac in the Economist's index, though the Indian sandwich is a Maharaja Mac, since McDonald's does not sell beef there, which is the one place the index's like-for-like premise breaks down. Local staples are inexpensive; imported and branded goods are not. GST is tiered from 5% to 28% with a general rate of 18%, and most fresh unprocessed food is nil-rated, so the tax system draws a hard line between what comes from a farm and what comes from a factory. That line is visible directly in this table: the unbranded items sit near the bottom of the global range while the branded ones climb toward the middle.
What else costs what in India
| Item | USD | Local | Work time |
|---|---|---|---|
| Big Mac | $2.51 | 227 INR | 60 min |
| Coca-Cola (330ml can) | $0.82 | 70 INR | 20 min |
| Cappuccino | $1.70 | 162.34 INR | 41 min |
| Eggs (dozen) | $0.91 | 86.9 INR | 22 min |
| Apples (1 kg) | $1.94 | 185.26 INR | 47 min |
| Gasoline (1 litre) | $1.09 | 104.09 INR | 26 min |
| Diesel (1 litre) | $1.03 | 98.33 INR | 25 min |
| Electricity (100 kWh) | $7.10 | 678 INR | 2.8 h |
| Natural gas (100 kWh) | $4.80 | 458 INR | 1.9 h |
| Cigarettes (20-pack) | $2.27 | 190 INR | 54 min |
| Mobile data (1 GB) | $0.16 | — | 4 min |
| A day's healthy diet | $0.93 | 81.4 INR | 22 min |
Go deeper
See the full table for milk in every country or everything priced in India.