Labs
The evidence
The quantitative layer — data and visual summaries that back the claims in our writing, each figure sourced. For the people and events behind the numbers, see History.
Infographics
All infographics →Milestones in Dalit history
From Jyotirao Phule's 19th-century challenge to Brahmanical authority to the Supreme Court's 2024 ruling on sub-classification, this timeline traces a century and a half of struggle, legislation, and landmark moments that have shaped Dalit political identity and rights in India.
The Dalit world, at a glance
Scheduled Castes — constitutionally recognised as Dalits — are India's largest marginalised group: 201 million people spread across 1,108 officially listed communities. Though 84 parliamentary seats are reserved for them, structural exclusion persists at every level. Beyond India, the United Nations estimates caste-based discrimination touches 260 million lives across South Asia and its global diaspora. International legal recognition has been slow and uneven: Seattle became the first US city to ban caste discrimination in February 2023, while the United Kingdom still has not enacted its own long-standing statutory duty to add caste as a protected characteristic.
Crimes against Scheduled Castes, in figures
In 2024 India registered 55,698 crimes against Scheduled Castes — one case every nine minutes — yet courts acquit or discharge more than six in ten SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act prosecutions. The National Crime Records Bureau's most recent report (released May 2026) shows caseloads up 30 percent since 2018, a crime rate of 27.7 per lakh SC population, and 4,262 rapes of Dalit women in a single year. Police file charge sheets in 82 percent of cases. The accountability gap lies downstream: impunity in court remains the structural norm.
India's caste economy, in figures
Scheduled Castes — roughly one in six Indians — face entrenched economic exclusion on every measurable dimension. They hold a disproportionately small share of agricultural land, earn less than the national average from farming, are nearly twice as likely to be multidimensionally poor as upper-caste households, trail the national literacy rate by seven percentage points, see 40% of their children go stunted, and receive only 55 paise for every rupee earned by advantaged social groups. Taken together, these gaps are not statistical noise: they are the arithmetic of caste.
Datasets
The data behind the numbers
Census, NCRB, and survey data underpin every figure we cite. We're opening these up as browsable datasets — the sources are already listed on each infographic.