Law, statistics, public-private partnership and the emergence of a new subject

The objective of the chapter is to understand the new form of government that has come into being. The questions to be asked in this context are the following: What is being governed in the first place—the population or the circuits of capital? What is the relationship between the two? Circuits of capital are generated through forms of infrastructure consolidation (the Indira Gandhi Airport in New Delhi, for example). What makes the monopoly of infrastructure distinct is the emergence of public–private partnerships (PPP). This chapter examines these PPP endeavours, their efficiencies, successes, failures and effects on labour politics and social struggles. There are PPS of the institutional nature and PPPs of the legal nature; this calls for political and legal innovation. Though scholars argue that PPPs are used to break the model of state activity in social sphere and curb its manipulation of social relations, the author argues that PPPs allow the state to restructure itself. The ‘population’ is modelled as a composite of consumers of goods in a profit-base. The PPPs are more than the sum of its public and private parts; they give rise to a distinct mode which operates through a distinct relationship of space, politics and people that influence the market.