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mospiR

R client for India’s MoSPI Microdata Portal. Download unit-level survey microdata from the National Sample Survey (NSS), Periodic Labour Force Survey (PLFS), Annual Survey of Industries (ASI), Household Consumer Expenditure Survey (HCES), and other Government of India surveys via the NADA API.

Documentation: https://mospir.saketlab.org

Installation 

remotes::install_github("saketlab/mospiR")

Setup

Register at microdata.gov.in and copy your API key from My Profile > API Key. Add it to ~/.Renviron:

MOSPI_KEY=your-key-here

Then reload with readRenviron("~/.Renviron") or restart R.

Usage 

library(mospiR)
api_key <- Sys.getenv("MOSPI_KEY")

# Search datasets by keyword
plfs <- list_datasets(api_key, query = "labour force")
plfs[, c("idno", "title")]

# List files in a dataset
files <- list_files("DDI-IND-NSO-ASI-2020-21", api_key)
files[, c("name", "size")]

# Download one file
download_file("DDI-IND-NSO-ASI-2020-21", "ASI_DATA.zip", "./data", api_key)

# Download all files in a dataset
download_dataset("DDI-IND-NSO-ASI-2020-21", "./data", api_key)

Functions

Function Description
list_datasets() List all datasets; page = NULL fetches all pages; query filters by title
list_files() Files in a dataset (name, size, base64 token)
download_file() Download one file by name
download_dataset() Download all files in a dataset

Requests retry up to 4 times with exponential backoff on 401, 429, and 5xx responses.

Available surveys

The portal hosts microdata from NSS rounds 43 through 80, PLFS quarterly rounds, ASI annual rounds, and selected special surveys. See list_datasets(api_key) for the full catalog.

License

MIT