The Government of India awarded Sankaran the civilian honor of the Padma Bhushan in 2005, which was later refused by him. In 2011, a year after his death, the Government of Andhra Pradesh installed his statue in front of the office of the Department of Social Welfare, the first instance a civil servant was honored by the government with a statue. On his birthday (22 October) in 2013, C. H. Hanumantha Rao, a former member of the National Advisory Council, released the first of the two-volume publication, Marginalisation, Development and Resistance: Essays in Tribute to SR Sankaran, which detailed his contributions for the welfare of the marginalized communities. When Malavath Purna, a Dalit teenager, summitted Mount Everest in May 2014, thus becoming the youngest female to summit the highest peak in the world, she carried a photograph of Sankaran and B. R. Ambedkar, in honour of the services rendered by them towards the cause of Dalits. Vikrama Simhapuri University has instituted an annual award, S. R. Sankaran Gold Medal for the best outgoing student in the Department of Social Welfare, in his honor and the National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad has a chair-professorship on rural labour, S. R. Sankaran Chair, named after him.