ABSTRACT
By the mid-20th century, conflicts over delimitation had become rites of passage in the lives of modern states in the developing world. The process of delimitation involves the creation of, as far as possible, equal-sized constituencies to ensure that citizens enjoy equal voting rights irrespective of their identity and location. In practice, delimitation is circumscribed by various social, political-economic, and historical factors that reflect the relative bargaining power of different communities and administrative units. As a result, delimitation often turns into a site of meta-electoral conflicts over the timing of delimitation, scope of affirmative action (in legislatures) and the choice of administrative, legal, and statistical procedures that translate the principle of one-person one-vote into an electoral practice. However, the competition over the choice of electoral system and delimitation of constituencies, that is, the rules of the game, remains mostly obscure as it unfolds sporadically over a longer time scale. The experience of the Northeast India suggests that competition over delimitation is shaped by a combination of scalar politics and local political and economic factors and can spill over into the statistical arena and affect population censuses.
