Disparities continue to exist despite improvements in people's access to 'the bare necessities' across India in 2018 from 2012, and appropriate strategy needs to be designed for the country to achieve SDG goals by 2030, according to the Economic Survey 2020-21. Building on previous year's survey that examined access to food through the idea of "Thalinomics: The Economics of a Plate of Food in India", this year it took a step further to study access to 'the bare necessities' -- housing, water, sanitation, electricity and clean cooking fuel. It constructed a Bare Necessities Index (BNI) at rural, urban and all India level by summarising 26 indicators on five dimensions of access to water, sanitation, housing, micro-environment, and other facilities.