Digitization of key data is an important way to plan Navsarjan programmes and address caste discrimination effectively.

With Navsarjan’s outreach extending to more than 3,000 villages around Gujarat, it has a unique ability to systematically collect data concerning ground realities, and then analyze and utilize that data. While Navsarjan has been doing this since its inception, the emphasis of the Digitization of Research and Documentation Programme is to involve more professionals and widen the scope and size of our data collection.

The following ten subjects have been targeted for data collection and digitization:

1.     Prevalence of untouchability practices

2.     Violence and atrocities

3.     Implementation of land reforms

4.     Manual scavenging

5.     Primary education

6.     Labour and migration

7.     Women and health

8.     Poverty

9.     Political representation

10. Minimum wages and their implementation

Once these data are collected and analyzed, they can be used to help identify trends and changes, to help file class-action suits, to organize based on taluka or district to effectively raise a particular issue, to lobby at the international level, and to provide a replicable model for other organizations around India.

In collaboration with the Robert F Kennedy (RFK) Center for Human Rights and the University of Maryland, Navsarjan conducted its first major survey on widescale prevalence of untouchability practices in 1,589 villages across Gujarat.  This survey, encapsuled into a study report, “Understanding Untouchability”, also published in Gujarati under the title, Abhadchchedni Bhal”, it provided an unprecedented view of the extent to which untouchability is actively practiced in Gujarat today.

Navsarjan also financed the production of the award-winning documentary “India Untouched: Stories of a People Apart”, produced by former director Stalin K. of Drishti Media. “India Untouched” (click HERE to read about the film)  demonstrates that, despite denials by India’s urban elite, untouchability is a fact of life for Dalits in all spheres of life, all over India.