Data / Violence / Untouchability in the data

Methods and sources

Untouchability in the data

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What this shows

How landlords and agents in five cities around Delhi answered matched Dalit, Muslim and dominant-caste Hindu home-seekers in 2012, how many non-Dalit Hindus in four places said in 2016 and 2011-12 that untouchability is practised in their households, and how many households in the IHDS-II sample across India said so in 2011-12, by rural and urban areas and by social group.

What it does not show: A national share: each figure covers its study’s own sample, place and year, and the survey figures count only those who said so.

Sources

  • Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 50, Nos 26 and 27, pp 47-53, Thorat S, Banerjee A, Mishra VK and Rizvi F, “Urban Rental Housing Market: Caste and Religion Matters in Access”. The article as printed in EPW's “Housing Discrimination” section, in a copy hosted by the Housing and Land Rights Network (HLRN). EPW's own page, https://www.epw.in/journal/2015/26-27/housing-discrimination/urban-rental-housing-market.html, is for subscribers., Table 1 and Table 2, dated 27 Jun 2015. Survey by researchers or an NGO: a sample, not a national count.
  • Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 53, No 1, pp 46-54, Coffey D, Hathi P, Khurana N and Thorat A, “Explicit Prejudice: Evidence from a New Survey”. The authors' manuscript in PubMed Central (PMC10460543), published in EPW's Special Articles, which EPW sends to referees. EPW's own page, https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/1/special-articles/explicit-prejudice.html, is for subscribers., Table 3, dated 6 Jan 2018. Peer-reviewed study: a sample, not a national count.
  • India Human Development Survey (IHDS), National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland, “India Human Development Survey-II 2011-12, Income & Social Capital Questionnaire”. IHDS's own copy, listed on its IHDS-II questionnaires page.. Survey by researchers or an NGO: a sample, not a national count.
  • Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 55, No 2, Thorat A and Joshi O, “The Continuing Practice of Untouchability in India: Patterns and Mitigating Influences”. The article's full text as ProQuest prints it (ProQuest One Academic, document 2337091680), supplied by the owner; the print carries the text but not the paper's figures or tables. Published in EPW's Special Articles, which EPW sends to referees. EPW's own page is for subscribers., dated 11 Jan 2020. Peer-reviewed study: a sample, not a national count.

Analysis by The Dalit Project, as on 28 Oct 2026.

Read these with the numbers

  • The audit, the SARI study and Thorat and Joshi’s study of IHDS-II each cover their own samples, places and years. The IHDS-II sample covers all India, but its shares are what its 42,152 households’ primary respondents said, not a count of every household. None is shown as a national share, and the studies are not compared with each other.
  • The survey figures are self-reported: people who practise untouchability and do not say so, or do not see their behaviour that way, are not counted.
  • The audit’s in-person sample is small, 66 home-seekers in each group.
  • The audit paper’s text gives some shares that differ from its tables: by telephone, “While all the 493 high-caste home-seekers received a positive response, the corresponding proportion fell to 59% for the Dalits and to merely 29% for the Muslims”, against 492 of 493, 58.62% and 33.47% in Table 1; in person, 30% of Muslims, against 28.79% in Table 2. The tables are used.
  • SARI weights its estimates to the Census 2011 population, the latest census with tables out; Census 2027 tables are not yet published.
  • The all-India IHDS-II shares are taken from the text of Thorat and Joshi’s paper, read in a ProQuest print that does not reproduce its figures; the Other Backward Classes (OBCs) share, given only in Figure 2, is not shown, and no figure is taken from news reports of the study.
  • No official survey found counts how often untouchability is practised. The official record is the National Crime Records Bureau’s count of cases registered under the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, on the PCR Act page.

Key terms

Untouchability
The exclusion of Dalits as ritually polluting. Article 17 of the Constitution abolishes it, forbids its practice in any form and makes enforcing any disability arising from it an offence.
Audit study
A field experiment in which matched people, alike in everything but the trait being tested, here a name showing caste or religion, apply for the same thing, and the answers are compared.
Positive on different terms
The audit’s middle answer: a flat offered with “differential terms and conditions”, in the study’s words, such as a higher rent, a limit on the period of stay, or restrictions on food or on movement.
NCR
The National Capital Region: Delhi and the cities around it. The audit covered Delhi, Faridabad, Ghaziabad, Gurgaon and Noida.
SARI
Social Attitudes Research, India: a phone survey of adults in Delhi, Mumbai, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh in 2016.
IHDS
The India Human Development Survey, run by the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) and the University of Maryland. Its second round, IHDS-II, was in 2011-12.
Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs)
The constitutional lists of Dalit and Adivasi communities, under Articles 341 and 342 of the Constitution.
Other Backward Classes (OBCs)
The official category of castes recognised as socially and educationally backward, outside the SC and ST lists.
Forward castes
Thorat and Joshi’s term for the Kshatriyas and Vaishyas. The IHDS-II asked households in the general category for their group, and the study counts these and the Brahmins apart.
Survey
Research by researchers or an NGO with a stated method and sample, here the audit. Its figures cover its own sample.
Peer-reviewed study
A study published in a journal after review by other researchers. Its figures cover its own sample.

Changelog and corrections

Version 1: First version: the 2012 NCR rental audit’s telephone and in-person tables; the SARI study’s table of untouchability reported by place, from SARI 2016 and IHDS 2011-12; and Thorat and Joshi’s IHDS-II shares of households across India that said they practise untouchability, all households, rural and urban, and by the social groups their text gives.

How corrections work. Every change is listed here.

Cite this

The Dalit Project, “Untouchability in the data”, version 1, data.dalitproject.org/untouchability/, as on 28 Oct 2026.