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 government statistics and charts their cradle-to-grave political career in Nagaland, a state located in India’s landlocked ethno-geographic periphery stretching from Mizoram to Jammu & 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 and examines the impact of inadequacies in the data generating processes on statistics of interest to policymakers that govern federal redistribution, delimitation of constituencies and poverty alleviation programs. It argues that Nagaland's statistics are shaped by a combination of factors, including discontent with colonial borders, competition over resource-rich territories, political unrest, demand for the creation of new districts, competition for government spending and contests over the delimitation of 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 & 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. The book also throws fresh light on the North East by bringing a new lens – data – to debates on the region that has for long been seen exclusively through the lenses of development and democracy deficits and, in the process, offers a ringside view of centre-state relations and how the periphery views and experiences the state.

Links:

1. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/numbers-in-indias-periphery/FE6168238548B42FE99CC6C7896CACE3

2. https://www.amazon.in/Numbers-Indias-Periphery-Government-Statistics/dp/110848672X

3. https://books.google.co.in/books/about/Numbers_in_India_s_Periphery.html?id=fdtWzQEACAAJ&redir_esc=y

Book discussions:

1. Bangalore International Centre, 9 Nov 2020: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeT9vbBb3Vs&feature=youtu.be & https://bangaloreinternationalcentre.org/event/data-development-and-democracy/

2. Centre for North East Studies and Policy Research (C-NES), 4 Jan 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLl7IggQu84

Book reviews:

1. Sonalde Desai, 2021. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/padr.12420 (Population and Development Review)

2. TCA Anant, 2021. https://www.thebookreviewindia.org/the-politics-of-official-data/ (The Book Review)

3. Pramit Bhattacharya, 2022. "Manufacturing Census Counts in North East India" (Economic and Political Weekly) https://www.epw.in/journal/2022/11/book-reviews/manufacturing-census-counts-north-east-india.html

4. TCA Srinivas Raghavan, 2021. https://www.thehindubusinessline.com/opinion/books/data-and-its-discontents/article36308011.ece (The Hindu BusinessLine)

5. Sanjoy Hazarika, 2021. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09722661211051550 (Review of Development and Change)

6. Poonam Singh, 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40953-021-00249-9 (Journal of Quantitative Economics)