India’s 2025 festive season has been painted as a triumphant comeback story: festive spending through record Diwali sales, tax cuts, and the “return” of the confident consumer. E‑commerce platforms, retailers and trade bodies have highlighted headline numbers running into lakhs of crores, with categories like electronics and automobiles seeing demand so strong that inventories struggled to keep up. Yet beneath the glitter of social‑media‑fuelled shopping hauls, the pattern of who is spending, on what, and how, tells a more complicated story about India’s economy and its inequalities.
Macro Indicators: Low Inflation, Tax Relief, Headline Growth
On the surface, macro‑indicators look unusually benign. Retail inflation has fallen to multi‑year lows, hovering around 1.5–2% by late 2025, giving households more real purchasing power than in recent years. Cuts in GST on a range of goods, described in some analyses as a “GST 2.0” moment, effectively handed additional disposable income to middle‑ and higher‑income households, with one estimate suggesting tax relief worth around ₹2 lakh crore feeding directly into consumption. Visa’s spending momentum data shows that card‑based expenditure spiked sharply during the Dussehra–Diwali window, with electronics alone reportedly seeing sales nearly eight times the baseline. In aggregate, India looks like a country splurging again, driving strong GDP growth into FY2026.
Beneath The Averages: A Billion With Little Room To Spend
But averages can be misleading. Reporting over the last few years has consistently shown that while festive spending at the top end has surged, a large share of Indian households have far less room to participate in this boom. A BBC analysis earlier in 2025 noted that roughly a billion Indians effectively have little discretionary income once essentials are paid for, with savings buffers at or near multi‑decade lows for many families. When viewed through that lens, this year’s festival “splurge” looks increasingly like a story driven by a relatively narrow, though growing, slice of upper‑ and upper‑middle‑class consumers, amplified by social media rather than broadly shared prosperity.
Social Media: The Engine Of Aspirational Consumption
Social media platforms sit at the centre of this new consumption landscape. Campaigns on Instagram, YouTube and short‑video apps have turned the festive season into a highly choreographed theatre of lifestyle aspiration, where curated hauls, outfit reels and gadget unboxings set the tone for what a “good Diwali” or “perfect Christmas” is supposed to look like. As the HT Media analysis of festive behaviour highlights, discovery is now overwhelmingly digital: shoppers first encounter products through influencer content, connected‑TV ads and gamified campaigns before clicking through to e‑commerce or visiting physical stores. The success of HT Media’s own omnichannel “Festival of Gifts” campaign, which reportedly delivered three times more engagement than passive ads and a 28% lift in brand favourability, illustrates how deeply marketing has learned to ride this wave of attention.
Down‑Trading And Underconsumption: The Other Side Of The Story
What this stream of content often obscures, however, is a quieter shift in the way many households are navigating the same season. Even in a low‑inflation year, wage growth, job security and rural incomes have not improved evenly across the country, and analysts warn that real consumption momentum outside of festival months remains fragile. Surveys and retailer commentary point to a pattern where higher‑income consumers in metros and tier‑2 cities trade up to premium goods – large‑screen TVs, high‑end smartphones, bigger appliances – while lower‑income and entry‑level segments either down‑trade to smaller pack sizes or skip big‑ticket discretionary purchases altogether. In other words, the same sales numbers that thrill markets can mask under‑consumption and stress at the bottom.
Regional Splits: Where The Money Flows
The geography of spending reinforces this split. Reports on festive demand show especially strong growth in urban and semi‑urban markets like Maharashtra, Gujarat and the larger southern states, with robust sales of automobiles, luxury electronics and branded fashion. Meanwhile, regions with lower per‑capita incomes and more fragile rural economies see a greater share of spending concentrated in essentials and gold rather than aspirational consumption. The HT Media data on regional product preferences – more gadgets and cars in some northern and central states, more jewellery and two‑wheelers in parts of the South and East – hints at these structural differences in asset preferences and perceived security.
Credit And Digital Payments: Convenience Or Leverage?
Fintech and digital payments add another layer. UPI volumes hit around 20 billion transactions a month by August 2025, cementing digital payments as the default mode for festive shopping. At the same time, BNPL schemes and other credit‑linked offers have grown rapidly during sales periods, lowering the entry barrier for big‑ticket purchases. For financially stable households, these tools can be convenient ways to smooth spending across the year; for more vulnerable families, they risk becoming quiet channels for over‑leveraging. Analysts have warned that the combination of easy credit, incessant social‑media marketing and cultural pressure to “celebrate properly” can push some consumers into obligations that outlast the festive glow.
Intentional Living: A Counter‑Trend Among The Affluent
Against this backdrop, the language of “intentional living” and mindful consumption that is gaining traction globally takes on a particular resonance in India. Trend reports suggest that a growing cohort of urban consumers are trying to reconcile festive enthusiasm with concerns about sustainability, clutter and financial prudence, choosing fewer but higher‑quality purchases, experiential gifts, or products from local and ethical brands. The rise of social‑commerce success stories built around artisanal, upcycled or eco‑friendly goods points to a segment of shoppers whose values are shifting even as they remain embedded in the same digital ecosystems that fuel impulse buying.
What The Festive Numbers Really Reveal
Ultimately, this festive season’s spending patterns function as a kind of Rorschach test for India’s economic story. On one reading, low inflation, tax cuts and crowded malls confirm the narrative of a confident, consumption‑driven economy pulling away from global peers. On another, the reliance on a relatively narrow band of consumers, the dependence on promotional intensity and credit, and the persistent under‑consumption among a large share of households highlight the limits of a growth model that leans so heavily on festive demand spikes.
Social media sits at the intersection of these realities: a showcase of India’s aspirational consumer class and a mirror that, if read carefully, reveals who is missing from the frame. As brands celebrate bumper sales and platforms tout record engagement, the deeper question is whether the next festive season will see a broadening of genuine purchasing power, or simply a more sophisticated choreography of desire around the same constrained budgets. For now, India’s festive shopping spree tells a story of both buoyant sentiment and uneven security – a glittering surface laid over an economy whose strengths and stresses are still very much in flux.
