The long, sporadic prehistory of this book began when Vikas read former Chief Minister of Manipur Radhabinod Koijam's op-ed on the Naga peace process in the Hindu after finishing his undergraduate studies. Writing a few months after the 2001 Census, Koijam drew attention towards, among other things, the discrepancies between different estimates of Nagaland's area and population. An interview of Nagaland's Chief Minister Neiphiu Rio by Sanjoy Hazarika published in the Statesman in December 2005, when Vikas was back in the academe, briefly revived the interest in Nagaland's statistics. In the interview, Rio admitted that his state's headcount was flawed. This study though had to wait until 2011, when Ankush came across a news report on the ‘contraction’ of Nagaland's population between 2001 and 2011.

Our preliminary analysis of the census data suggested that conventional factors could not explain Nagaland's abnormal demographic trajectory. While it became clear that non-demographic factors were key to understanding changes in Nagaland's population and that fieldwork and archival research were indispensable, the scope of the study remained ill-defined until after we visited the state to obtain a first-hand idea of the scale and nature of the statistical ‘mess’. Our conversations through the second half of 2011 coalesced into short-term project proposals at our respective institutions, Institute of Economic Growth and Azim Premji University. Little did we know then that Nagaland's statistics would engage us for the better part of the following decade and take us through the length and breadth of the state.

Studying maps was not part of our original plan. During our visits to Nagaland, we found a great diversity of maps on the walls of government offices and private establishments. Discussions with government officials and civil society leaders complicated the picture further. Finally, after a senior bureaucrat effectively told us that the estimate of the state's area was a state secret, we decided to examine maps and area statistics and realised that they were essential for conducting population censuses and sample surveys.