Power of Enumeration and Classification in ‘Making up People’: A social Analysis of a ‘Quantitative Object’

In this paper we weave a social analysis around a ‘quantitative object’ i.e. The Report on an Inquiry into the Relation between the Wages and the Cost of Living of Estate Labourers, April-May, 1923. This is a report written by R. Jones-Bateman, an Assistant Director of Statistics of the government of ‘Ceylon’, on instructions received from then ‘Colonial Secretary’ to the Island. Our analysis of this ‘quantitative object’ is focused towards explicating its role in an organizing process and is inspired by the approaches and concepts of the philosophy of quantification. Through this analysis, we hope to discern the power exerted by the various forms of ‘enumerations and classifications’ as articulated in the report, on the colonial endeavour of ‘making up people’- people whom the report classifies as ‘coolies’. Further, we explore the manner in which numbers and categories are presented in the report to portray the ‘habits of people’ it makes known as ‘coolies’. Finally, we argue that the colonial state, through enumerating, tabulating and making public such social phenomenon, sought to control a deviant subpopulation of people – the estate labourers of Indian origin – or the so called ‘coolies’ of the early twentieth century ‘Ceylonese’ tea plantations.