Numbers in India's Periphery : The Political Economy of Government Statistics

This book analyses the quality of statistics such as geographic area, census population and sample survey statistics in a developing country. Using field interviews, archival sources, and secondary data covering the last seven decades, it explores the shifting relations between various kinds of statistics over their lifecycles and charts their cradle-to-grave political career. It uncovers a mutually constitutive relationship between data, development, and democracy and offers an exciting account of how government statistics are social artefacts dynamically shaped by political and economic factors. The book also quantifies the impact of data quality on the statistics of interest to policy makers such as household consumption expenditure and federal transfers. Numbers in India's Periphery makes a major contribution to the growing literature on the political economy of statistics in developing countries through a novel analysis of the shifting determinants of the nature of data in North East India. "Over the past two centuries, the deep and multifaceted relation between statistics and statecraft has emerged as a defining feature of modern states across the world. Governments increasingly depend upon statistics for planning and evaluation of interventions as well as self-representation. Numbers in India's Periphery examines systematic and deliberate errors in government statistics. Using field interviews, archival sources and secondary data, the book explores the shifting relations between various kinds of statistics and charts their cradle-to-grave political career in Nagaland, a state located in India's landlocked ethnogeographic periphery stretching from Mizoram to Jammu and Kashmir. This book examines the area (1951-2018), population (1951-2011) and National Sample Survey statistics (1973-2014) of Nagaland, treating them as part of a larger family of mutually constitutive statistics embedded in a shared context. It shows that Nagaland's government statistics suffer from sustained and large errors. It argues that statistics are shaped by a combination of factors, including contests over the delimitation of administrative units and electoral constituencies in the context of weak institutions and dominance of the state in the economy. It also engages with the shared experience of other states of India, including Assam, Jammu and Kashmir and Manipur, and other countries in Africa and Asia and non-governmental statistics such as church membership data. Numbers in India's Periphery uncovers a mutually constitutive relationship between data, development and democracy deficits and offers an exciting account of how statistics are social artefacts dynamically shaped over their life cycle by political and economic factors. It contributes to the under-researched field of the political economy of statistics in developing countries"-- Provided by publisher Part I. Introduction -- State and statistics -- Nagaland and numbers -- Part II. Key statistics -- Cartographic 'mess' -- Demographic somersault -- Winning censuses -- Flawed surveys -- Part III. Policy implications -- Data, development and democracy