This paper seeks to explore a different way of examining the ‘difference’ of European and colonial governments, showing how the Indian colonial state privileged investments in political, rather than civil, society. The former targeted the population and sought effects through policies that could be co-ordinated from a distance, at low cost. The latter targeted the social realm and necessarily involved the admission of the rights and privileges of liberal citizenship. Calculations in political society displayed: certain ways of visualizing a population, epistemological assumptions about what could be known, identity assumptions about how subjects should be conceived and an ethos that protected the state from heavy expense. This is illustrated practically through exploring the debate over congestion in colonial Delhi. Three texts that addressed the congestion debate are analysed in depth: an official government report; a publication by a member of the Delhi Improvement Trust; and a memorandum submitted to the government. These texts demonstrate a span of opinions regarding the methods by which congestion could be solved and the calculations about local subjects these solutions would presume.
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