The Reserve Bank of India’s latest Handbook of Statistics of Indian States, released on 11 December 2025, casts Assam in a strikingly dual light: a state powering ahead in macroeconomic growth, yet still wrestling with deep structural challenges that shape how far that growth translates into real prosperity for its people. Assam stands out as the fastest-growing major state economy over the last five years, with its Gross State Domestic Product expanding by about 45 percent at constant prices between 2019–20 and 2024–25, far ahead of the national average of roughly 29 percent. Yet beneath these headline figures, the handbook’s data makes it clear that the journey from growth to genuine prosperity in Assam is still incomplete.
The first fault line appears in per capita income and consumption patterns. Even after this surge, Assam’s per capita income, at about 1.54 lakh rupees in 2024–25, remains roughly one-third lower than the national average, indicating that the benefits of growth are spread thinly when divided among its people. Household expenditure data shows that rural families in Assam spend over half of their monthly per capita expenditure on food, while urban households spend roughly 47.4 percent on food, one of the highest shares nationwide.
The sectoral profile of the state’s economy, as reflected in the data, further explains this prosperity gap. Services now contribute about 46 percent of Gross State Value Added, with the primary sector at around 35 percent and industry at 19 percent. However, two traditional pillars—tea and hydrocarbons—illustrate how growth can coexist with vulnerability. Assam produces nearly 650 million kg of tea, accounting for more than half of India’s output, yet the economics of tea are under strain: production costs have jumped from about 80 rupees per kilogram in 2010 to around 140 rupees in 2024, even as auction prices remain stubbornly flat.
The petroleum and natural gas segment tells a different but equally cautionary story. Assam ranks among the leading crude oil-producing states and has garnered more than 19,000 crore rupees in oil royalties between 2019 and 2023, heavily supporting its infrastructure and welfare spending. Yet the extractive nature of this sector means that it is capital-intensive, generates comparatively limited local employment, and exposes the state’s revenue to the volatility of world commodity prices.
Human development indicators in the handbook-based assessment underline this disconnect between economic vigour and social outcomes. Life expectancy in Assam stands at around 67.9 years, below the national average of 70, while the infant mortality rate is still close to 48 deaths per thousand live births, compared with about 40 nationally, and maternal mortality remains worryingly high. These burdens are compounded by high healthcare costs in urban Assam, where average hospitalization expenses exceed 47,000 rupees, driven by heavy reliance on private facilities, even as rural households depend predominantly on public hospitals at far lower but still significant cost for the poor.
Education, the bedrock of sustained prosperity, shows a similar pattern of partial progress. Assam has effectively achieved universal enrollment at the primary and elementary stages, with Gross Enrollment Ratios at or above 100 percent, but the ladder breaks at higher levels. The GER in higher education stands at only about 16.9 percent as of 2021–22, down from 18 percent a few years earlier and dramatically below the national average of 28.4 percent.
Where infrastructure is concerned, the statistical picture is far more encouraging, and it helps explain the recent growth spurt. Public capital expenditure has focused heavily on roads, and nearly all habitations—around 99.7 percent—are now connected by all-weather roads under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana, dramatically improving access to markets, services and opportunities. The state achieved full rural electrification of inhabited un-electrified villages by 2018, and electricity demand is projected to grow at more than 6 percent annually through the early 2030s, driven by industrial expansion and rising household consumption, with investments in both hydropower, such as the 120 MW Lower Kopili project, and solar capacity. On the digital front, about 95 percent of villages have 3G or 4G coverage, but actual internet use remains uneven, especially among women.
Assam’s Labour Force Participation Rate has surged from under 47 percent in 2019–20 to nearly 67 percent in 2023–24, with a particularly sharp rise in rural female participation from around 29 to 43 percent. Much of this increase, however, is driven by self-employment, especially in agriculture, and a growing proportion of women in insecure, contract-less work, highlighting that headline gains in participation do not necessarily equate to secure or well-paid employment.
Perhaps the most hopeful cluster of numbers in the recent statistical evidence relates to poverty reduction and financial inclusion. NITI Aayog’s Multi-dimensional Poverty Index, reflecting trends up to the early 2020s, shows that the share of Assam’s population classified as multi-dimensionally poor has fallen from about 37 percent in 2013–14 to around 14.5 percent in 2022–23, meaning that over 80 lakh people have escaped overlapping deprivations in less than a decade. Yet the so‑called SDG paradox persists: Assam scores well on goals like poverty reduction and water and sanitation, but still ranks only in the lower half of Indian states on the overall SDG index, dragged down by weaker performance in industry, innovation and infrastructure, as well as quality education.
With a GSDP of 6.43 lakh crore, Assam’s economy remains modest in absolute size compared with giants like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka or Uttar Pradesh, whose state domestic products are several times larger. Even though Assam’s five-year growth rate outpaces those of many of these states, its per capita GSDP remains roughly a fifth to a quarter below the national average, and significantly below more industrialised peers, highlighting that it is still catching up from a position of long-term relative underdevelopment.
The future trajectory will depend on how Assam manages the interplay of growth, distribution and resilience. The government’s ambition of becoming a 143‑billion‑dollar economy by 2030, anchored in a district-led development strategy, aims to spread growth more evenly across regions that now show wide variation in SDG scores. However, recurrent floods that cause annual losses running into thousands of crores, the distress in the tea sector, the heavy dependence on central transfers—currently accounting for nearly two-thirds of revenue receipts—and the ecological and social risks of extractive-led growth all pose substantial headwinds. The real test will be whether Assam can lift its tax effort, diversify its industrial and services base, narrow its education and nutrition deficits, and harness its young labour force into productive, dignified employment.
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Viewed through the lens of the RBI’s Handbook, Assam’s story is therefore one of promise and paradox. Rapid GSDP growth has clearly broken the inertia of past decades, enabled major gains in poverty reduction, and strengthened the fiscal capacity of the state, but it has not yet matured into a level of prosperity that matches the best-performing regions of India in health, education and per capita income. Until child malnutrition recedes, higher education enrollment converges with the national average, decent jobs expand faster than mere participation in precarious work, and the benefits of infrastructure and digital connectivity are more evenly shared, GSDP will remain a necessary but not sufficient measure of Assamese well-being.
