Getting Creative with Data: Managing Relationships and Quantitative Proof in an Indian NGO

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhile many scholars have documented how the pursuit of objective data reshapes relationships, I show how relationships can also affect how people interact with data. The donors and managers of a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in the foothills of the Indian Himalayas were most invested in their relationships with one another. These ties required quantitative data to act as proof that development was happening and money was well spent in the absence of direct observation. In order for numbers to serve this communicative function, the NGO's leaders treated the data produced by development projects as if they were objective representations of reality. However, the NGO's fieldworkers, who produced the data, were invested in ties outside the development community. They relied on their relationships with the NGO's beneficiaries—who were also their friends, neighbors, and kin—to help them survive (socially, emotionally, physically, and financially) in ways that NGO employment could not replace. Far from needing numbers to be objective proof, these relationships required fieldworkers to treat data as flexible and open to interpretation. Beneficiaries used projects in ways that the NGO's leaders did not anticipate or value, and fieldworkers were creative with data production to maintain their ties to both leaders and beneficiaries. [development, data, relationships, NGOs, South Asia]