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1 results

  • 3 - Chasing Computers

  • from Part I - Data
  • Nikhil Menon, University of Notre Dame, Indiana
  • Book:
    Planning Democracy
    Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022, pp 93-116

  • Summary

    The burst of information generated by new statistical projects made the question of calculation paramount. The masses of data that the new National Sample Surveys yielded, and the increasing complexity of planning models, had made the state’s data processing needs evident. Chapter 3 reveals the campaign led by Mahalanobis and the Indian Statistical Institute to bring India its first computers. Unlike in other parts of the world, computers were not sought for military purposes in India. Instead, India pursued them because they were seen as a solution to central planning’s most knotty puzzle, that of big data. The chapter follows the decade-long quest to import computers from the United States, Europe, and the U.S.S.R, unearthing the Cold War politics in which it inevitably became embroiled. Overall, Part I of this book demonstrates the building of a technocratic, data-hungry, high-modernist state and its attempts to make the economic realm more legible.