How we collect and check prices

1. Sources

• Eggs: the National Egg Co-ordination Committee (NECC) daily table of suggested and prevailing prices for 100 eggs, with history back to 2009.
• Mandi crops and vegetables: prices market committees report to Agmarknet, read from data.gov.in (Government Open Data Licence – India): minimum, maximum and modal price per quintal for each crop, variety and grade.
• Cardamom: Spices Board India e-auction results (small cardamom: each auction's arrivals, quantity sold, highest, lowest and average price) and large cardamom market prices.

Details and links: Sources.

2. Collection

A server checks each source every 20 minutes, day and night, with one small request, and downloads only what changed. When a state's two years of mandi history are complete, its pages are added (a few states a day). If a source fails, pages keep the last price with its own date.

3. Checks before anything is published

Each build runs automatic checks, and nothing goes live unless all of them pass:

• A page says "today" only when its price is dated today in India; otherwise it shows the date.
• Every link and every English–Telugu page pair works; every page has one heading, a title and a description.
• Every page showing NECC prices carries NECC's clarification word for word; every page showing Agmarknet prices credits Agmarknet and data.gov.in.
• Pages stay light (60 KB as downloaded) so they open fast on phones.

A price that moves more than 15% from the one before is published exactly as the source gave it, with a note asking readers to confirm with the market. In old records, values far from the days around them (for example 5400 for 540) are left out of charts and averages; they stay in our database.

4. How figures are worked out

• Egg packs: one egg = the 100-egg price ÷ 100; dozen 12, tray 30, peti 210 eggs.
• Per kg: the per-quintal price ÷ 100.
• Main variety: for each crop at each market, the variety and grade reported most often in the last year; a market's changes and charts use only that, so they compare like with like.
• Median across markets: the middle value of all markets' latest prices; used for crop, state and India figures because one unusual market cannot pull it.
• Cheaper and dearer months: for each full year, each month's average is compared with that year's average; pages show the mean gap per month over at least five full years.
• Weekly reports: every week, averages for the week before (Monday to Sunday) are compared with the previous week and the same week a year earlier.

5. What we never do

We do not estimate shop prices, forecast prices, invent reasons for a price move, or sell placements in price tables. Corrections: see the editorial policy.