What shapes indicator politics? Analyzing the representation of gender equality in governance for the Sustainable Development Goals in subnational India

Indicator development for earth system governance involves choices that influence which issues are considered legitimate. This makes indicators inherently political, rather than merely technical tools that objectively inform policy decisions. This article proposes a framework of indicator politics and applies this to the development of inequality indicators under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) in the Indian states of Tamil Nadu and Haryana. Our findings show that indicators are socio-materially shaped by ideas embedded in governance (data infra)structures that severely lack gender-sensitivity. We propose that indicator politics can best be understood as an interplay of socio-material elements that take different forms in different parts of the indicator development cycle, and our framework can help address often-overlooked issues of representation. We suggest that (sub)national governments actively seek ways to capture locally-specific inequalities by critically interrogating how and why issues are understood, framed and interpreted in certain ways, and what and how is revealed and obscured.