60% of our girls cannot go outside the house alone.
“60% of our girls cannot go outside the house alone.”Rahul Gandhi, Chhatron Ki Goonj rally, Pune, 22 August 2026
Rated Misleading
The facts
Rahul Gandhi’s 42% figure does come from NFHS-5, but it needs to be placed in context. NFHS-5 found that 42% of women aged 15–49 were usually allowed to go alone to all three places- the market, a health facility, and places outside their village/community.141
The comparison with NFHS-4 shows that this was a marginal improvement, not a dramatic deterioration: the corresponding figure rose from 41% in NFHS-4 to 42% in NFHS-5. The NFHS-5 data also shows substantial variation by age from 26% among women aged 15–19 to 55% among women aged 40–49. Thus, presenting the 42% figure without the NFHS-4 comparison or the underlying demographic variation gives a selective and incomplete picture of the data.
More importantly, he leaves out the historical comparison. During the Congress-led UPA era, NFHS-3 (2005–06) found that only 33% of women were allowed to go alone to all three places.126
Thus, the latest NFHS-5 data shows a 9-percentage-point improvement in the proportion of women able to go alone to all three places, from 33% in NFHS-3 to 42% in NFHS-5.142143144