The Information and Society Research Project at Sarai inaugurates a body of research, reflection and investigation on the different ways in which practices of information gathering, management and circulation impact on society in South Asia. Here, information is seen in its broadest sense as forms of knowledge and knowing as they play out in interaction with social and political processes, within realms defined by state as well as non state actors. The project's research scope will include enquiries about surveys, census records and their production, instruments and documents of identification such as identity cards, passports, fingerprints and other biometric identifiers, different forms of electronic and analog surveillance, the social and political deployment of statistical information, censorship and the protocols of governance, disclosure, secrecy, privacy and publicness that grow around different bodies and practices of information. The project will explore the history and current life of information in South Asia and include in its ambit reflection on how practices of information intersect with ideas of citizenship and governance, the formation of political subjectivities, public welfare and the security of the state. The project is at a preliminary stage, and the projects holdings consist of a growing set of texts and research notes from a year's field ethnography around information, security and surveillance in Delhi, as well as links to relevant clippings and online resources.