Rural Health Statistics of India — Harmonised Dataset, 2005–2023

A harmonised, analysis-ready compilation of India's Rural Health Statistics (RHS) annual reports, published by the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare, Government of India, for the years 2005 to 2022-23. The dataset covers 863 indicators across 12 domains — Sub Centres, Primary Health Centres, Community Health Centres, health workforce, building infrastructure, and separate tribal-area facilities — for all 36 States and Union Territories (40 including historical entities), giving 2,31,597 observations in long format. 1,010 raw report columns are harmonised into 863 canonical indicators across the two RHS reporting eras (2005–18 and 2019–23). Special values (surplus *, **, "Not Available", "Not Applicable") are preserved and never coerced to zero; state-name and boundary changes (Telangana 2014, Jammu & Kashmir / Ladakh 2019-20, the Dadra & Nagar Haveli–Daman & Diu merger 2020) are tracked explicitly. Every headline facility figure was verified value-by-value against the source tables for all 19 years. The dataset comprises a long-format master table, an 863-indicator data dictionary, 19 per-year tables, and 12 thematic wide tables (CSV and XLSX). Documentation — indicator naming, special-value semantics, methodology, verification, changelog and known limitations — is in the accompanying codebook. Availability: this Zenodo record is metadata-only. The dataset files are made available by the authors on reasonable request for non-commercial research and public-interest use. Requests: [e-mail], or via the Data Explorer at https://asarforindia.github.io/rhs-india/ This is an independent research compilation, not an official publication of the Ministry of Health & Family Welfare. Underlying figures are Government of India material; users should cross-check against the original RHS report of the relevant year.