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SUMMARY:National wealth or national poverty? Economic statistics\, citizen
 ship and the emergence of Indian democracy - Dr Eleanor Newbigin\, School 
 of Oriental and African Studies\, University of London
DTSTART:20151111T170000Z
DTEND:20151111T180000Z
UID:TALK61245@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Barbara Roe
DESCRIPTION:The last decade has seen an important shift in scholarly appro
 aches to the history of economics with scholars moving away from a narrati
 ve of theoretical revolutions to put greater emphasis on economics as a hi
 storically constructed discipline. Yet\, the vast majority of these newer 
 works have remained firmly focused on developments in Europe and the Unite
 d States.\n \nThis paper offers a close reading of K.T. Shah and K.J. Kham
 bata’s Wealth and taxable capacity of India\, (published in Bombay in 19
 24) to argue that late-colonial India was also an important site for econo
 mic knowledge production. Comparing Shah and Khambata’s work with that o
 f their British contemporaries\, it argues that economists in both the met
 ropole and colony grappled with similar kinds of economic questions but th
 e answers they produced were deeply informed by the particular political\,
  social and fiscal contexts within which they worked. One important differ
 ence between these contexts was the access British and Indian economists h
 ad to data about the respective societies on which their work focused – 
 while early twentieth century British economist and statisticians sought t
 o process a growing abundance of increasingly detailed statistical data ab
 out individual members of British society\, Indian economics in the same p
 eriod grappled with problems of data scarcity and a lack of knowledge abou
 t individual Indians’ economic conditions. I show that\, in seeking to a
 ddress this data silence\, Shah and Khambata produced statistical models o
 f Indian society that emphasised the important relationship between politi
 cal\, social and economic power\, rather than the separation of these sphe
 res of government. While this did not contribute to the strand of economic
  knowledge production that provided the mathematical and theoretical under
 pinnings of the post-Keynsian economic order\, Shah and Khambata helped to
  produce important new ways of thinking about Indian subjecthood which hig
 hlight\, more clearly perhaps than the works of their western peers\, the 
 ways in which economic thought and practice have shaped the formation of w
 hat we now refer to as democratic government.\n
LOCATION:Seminar Room S1\, Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambrid
 ge CB3 9DT
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