IHDS Explorer — untouchability, still practised
One of the most-cited findings of the India Human Development Survey is also one of the most uncomfortable: asked plainly, more than one in four households said someone in the home practises untouchability — refusing a Dalit person entry to the kitchen or the use of shared utensils. This explorer shows what the survey found: the national figure, the regional pattern, and the states the study named, highest to lowest.
What this measures — and why it matters
Untouchability is constitutionally abolished (Article 17), yet the IHDS asked households directly whether any member practises it — and about 27% said yes. Because this is the perpetrators admitting the practice, not victims reporting it, the true figure is almost certainly higher. It is one of the few large, representative measures of caste discrimination in everyday life — who is kept out of the kitchen, who may not draw water, whose plate is kept separate. For anyone working on caste, dignity, or Dalit rights, it turns an abstraction into a number you can stand on.
⚠ What this explorer shows — read this first
The IHDS is distributed as microdata (via ICPSR) and analysed in academic papers — it has no open government dashboard of state tables. The complete 36-state table sits in the peer-reviewed paper, which is paywalled. So this explorer shows only what is publicly and consistently reported: the national figure (27%), the regional pattern (below), and the ten states the study named — the seven highest and three lowest. Every number shown here is quoted from published sources; the states in between are not shown because we will not estimate them. It is a set of published highlights, not the full national ranking.
Making sense of the numbers
The question asked. IHDS enumerators asked whether members of the household would practise untouchability — for example, whether they would allow a Scheduled Caste person into the kitchen or to use their utensils. A "yes" is recorded as the household practising untouchability. Because roughly 70% of households said no, the headline is often quoted as "one in four" or "one in three" depending on how non-responses are counted; the figure used here is ~27%.
The regional pattern. Practice is heavily concentrated in the Hindi heartland and lowest in the east and far south — the published regional shares are:
| Region | Households practising untouchability |
|---|---|
| Central India | ~49% |
| North India | ~40% |
| South India | <20% |
| West India | ~13% |
Why some states are missing. The chart shows the ten states named in public reporting of the study — Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand at the top; Maharashtra, Kerala and West Bengal at the bottom. The remaining states are omitted deliberately: their exact values are in the paywalled paper, and we will not fill the gap with estimates. If you can access the full paper, we will complete the table.
Figures quoted from Amit Thorat and Omkar Joshi, "The Continuing Practice of Untouchability in India" (Economic & Political Weekly, 2020), analysing the India Human Development Survey II (2011-12), conducted by NCAER and the University of Maryland, and from NCAER's public reporting of the survey. This is an independent, source-linked interface for learning and discussion. ImpactMojo is not affiliated with NCAER, the University of Maryland, or the study authors.