Public sector projects are generally funded by either tax resources or borrowings. It is important, therefore, to undertake a periodic reassessment of the ideal social discount rate (SDR) by estimating the social time preference rate (STPR), representing the interest rate at which households may sacrifice current consumption to save, and the social opportunity cost (SOC) of deploying resources in a public project, in terms of the rate of return that could be generated if the resources are deployed instead in the private sector. Following the standard methodologies employed in related literature, this paper estimates India's STPR at 4.5% (in real terms), SOC at 2.94%, and SDR at 3.72%. To avoid any potential risk of resource misallocation and to help generate the required domestic resources for sustained high growth, a minimum real SDR of 3.72% appears to be ideal for public sector projects.