Have you ever bought a shirt from another country and found it did not fit? This is a common problem. A "Medium" in one country may be too big or too small in another country. India wants to fix this problem for its people.
On May 2, NPR reported that India has published a big survey. The goal is to create new clothing size standards just for Indian people. Until now, many clothing companies in India used size charts from the United States and the European Union. These charts were made for American and European bodies, not Indian ones. So many Indian customers bought clothes that did not fit well.
The new survey measured real Indian bodies. The data will become official national standards. If this works, a shirt with an "M" or "L" tag in Delhi or Chennai will really fit Indian people. It will not use averages from faraway countries.
This is a very big task. India has more than one billion people. Bodies are different across the country. People in the north look different from people in the south. Diet, climate, and lifestyle all change how people look. So it is hard to make one set of sizes for everyone.
But Indian companies say local sizes will be much better than foreign ones. Foreign sizes often make trousers too long or shirts too tight. Better sizes mean fewer returns and happier customers. India is not the first country to do this. Korean brands also use their own size systems. More countries may do the same in the future.