Survey data for India's democracy.
DALES is a data-facing collective of academics and practitioners studying social change in India. We conduct field surveys and use administrative data to build public-use datasets and analysis.
Field surveys and administrative data, made usable.
DALES brings together academics and practitioners to study social change in India through field surveys, administrative data, public analysis, and research resources that travel beyond the team that produced them.
Four connected streams.
Public Opinion and Electoral Analytics
We bring over a decade of experience conducting field surveys on public opinion and elections, with careful sampling, gender-sensitive teams, rigorous training, and supervision systems that help field teams understand the social context of the work.
Output: election surveys, questionnaires, sampling frames, public-use datasets, and analysis for researchers, journalists, and institutions.
Governance Efficacy and Institutional Analytics
As action in India shifts increasingly toward the states, we study how governments deliver welfare, public goods, and services, including direct benefit transfers, pensions, bureaucratic structures, and the resources needed for responsive administration.
Output: institutional diagnostics, delivery-system analysis, and advisory support for policy implementation.
Urbanization Trends and Migration Analytics
We study how urbanization, migration, work, settlement, and local economies reshape everyday public life, including how people move between villages, towns, and cities, access services, build livelihoods, and negotiate belonging.
Output: place-based research, migration profiles, urban service analysis, and socio-economic datasets.
Integrated Socio-Political Data Analytics
Our data-fusion work integrates field surveys, administrative records, geospatial markers, political information, and socio-economic indicators into usable secondary datasets and tools for clearer decision-making.
Output: linked datasets, documentation, dashboards, software tools, and applied analysis for public and institutional use.
Use DALES datasets for research, reporting, and public analysis.
Start with Indian Election Study and State Election Studies, or write to us if you are looking for survey data, administrative-data resources, questionnaires, or codebooks.