and class disparities in literacy. While the limitations of the measure were also recognized, the low levels of literacy led to demands from the bottom, via the radical press, to equalize the supply of education. The data were analyzed to comment upon its link with violence, “moral health” and the “rational enjoyment of blessing.” This led to improvements in both the demand and supply of education, to the extent that in the 19<sup>th</sup> century one generation was on average 20 percent more literate than its predecessor, a fact that is currently evident in many developing countries. It was, at the same time, recognized that having one literate family member was often sufficient to confer a high level of benefits. The rise in literacy was thus not just the result of efforts in public education but the widespread market for private schools with untrained, unofficial instructors. It was not until 1880 that all parents were required to send their children to “inspected” classrooms with compulsory attendance, with a simultaneous increase in public funding for education. The experience of the UK, where the concept of public education was largely developed, shows, therefore, that the measurement and identification of literacy was important in establishing a social compact to ensure that basic education was made universally available.

On the other hand, Cohn (1984) and Dirks (2001) have argued that when caste identification was introduced into the Indian census for the first time in 1871 by British administrators, the process of translating the fluid local dynamics of caste into a finite number of standardized quantitative census categories hardened the caste system and “created” a new form of caste, one that was amenable to quantification, less fluid, and easier for policy makers to “manage”. It changed, in other words, the very nature of caste. This had the unintended consequence of sparking lower caste social movements because low-caste social reformers were made aware of their large proportions in the population and they used the new categories to mobilize disadvantaged groups against discriminatory practices and towards greater rights. The policy imperative to ‘measure’ thus can lead to powerful social and economic changes, sometimes intended and sometimes unintended. As Susan Bayly (1999) has shown, this process of categorization and recategorization of caste has been part of the political economy of India, dating back to at least the 16<sup>th</sup> century, when local caste structures were modified every time a new ruler arrived and imposed different systems of tenure and revenue generation. This process continues today (see Rao and Ban 2007), with the caste structures influenced by processes as diverse as affirmative action, social movements and local politics.

# **IV. How and Why History Matters for Development Policy**

There are broadly three ways in which history matters for development policy. The first is through its insistence on the methodological principles of respect for context, process and difference when addressing the study of societies and policy efforts to bring about change in them. History views change as a complex causal process requiring a diversity of forms of knowledge, and a corresponding variety of methods for acquiring and interpreting that knowledge. Second, history is a resource of critical and reflective self-awareness about the nature of the discipline of development itself, its current preoccupations, why those preoccupations (and not others) have come to take their present form, and how they differ from past motives and aims, along with the crucial issue of how particular sources and forms of evidence are rendered salient. Third, history brings a particular kind of perspective to 15