The making of postcolonial governmentality

Abstract

This dissertation tries to understand the postcolonial modes of governmentalities by examining the forms of power-knowledge entanglement in the making of the Independent Indian state. We identify the Indian Statistical Institute and the formation of the National Sample Survey as our site of investigation where the infrastructure for a data-centric organization of public and governmental life in India finds its genesis. NSS subsequently became the guiding authority for every macroeconomic, welfare and industrial policy of the early postcolonial Indian state. By tracing a genealogy of enumeration and official statistics in colonial India and its role in the colonial mode of knowledge production, we attempt to understand the transformations of official data collection, organization and inferences from the colonial mode to a postcolonial mode. This forms the cornerstone of this thesis: the paradigmatic shift from colonial governmentality to postcolonial govern- mentality through ISI, NSS, and Planning Commissions within the context of democracy, decolonization and narratives of development.