Under Construction
Frontier Infrastructure in Northeast India
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 24234923 |
|---|---|
| Authors | D Hazarika (0009-0002-1579-5072, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2026-10-17 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0007-4810 • E-ISSN: 1472-6033 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14672715.2026.2744628 |
| OpenAlex | W7222822556 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 42 |
This article investigates encounters between infrastructure projects and Indigenous communities in Northeast India. Focusing on two projects by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation in the Dollungmukh region of Arunachal Pradesh, namely the Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project (SLHEP) and a Nyder Namlo (prayer hall), it shows how a large-scale, long-drawn-out construction process has become the turf for intense encounters between local communities, the state, and infrastructural technologies. Projects such as these function as a form of infrastructural optics, through which the state materially and discursively manifests itself and thereby constantly reaffirms and adjusts the material and discursive scaffolding of this frontier region. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, the article demonstrates how the construction of the SLHEP, one of India’s largest dams, has reshaped the local political economy, aspirations, and social relations. The article also highlights how the Nyder Namlo serves as a critical convergence point where state-making and efforts to undergird the collective life of local communities blend through the construction regime across multiple material and discursive realms.
Borderlands · construction projects · infrastructure development · Northeast India · Regional development · Indigenous Cultures and History · Sociopolitical Dynamics in Nepal · South Asian Studies and Conflicts
In the Name of the Nation
Unruly Hills
Beyond the Big Ditch
BJP and Donyi-Polo
Infrastructural Brutalism
Liberalization’s Children
India’s Look East Policy
Hydro-nation, Discourse and Discontent in Northeast India
Deluge amidst conflict
Borderland Histories, Northeastern India
Religious Nationalism, Christianisation and Institutionalisation of Indigenous Faiths in Contemporary Arunachal Pradesh, India
Dam, ‘Development’ and Popular Resistance in Northeast India
Slow forms of infrastructural violence
Nationalizing Space
Infrastructure and public works in colonial India
The enclosures of colonization
The Dark Side of Indigeneity
Can the borderland speak? Entangled territoriality in the foothills of Northeast India
From frontier-making to world-making
Infrastructural territorialisations
Disastrous hydropower, uneven regional development, and decolonization in India's Eastern Himalayan borderlands
The Enchantments of Infrastructure
"Contesting Militarized Violence in "Northeast India
Laos and the making of a 'relational' resource frontier
Regional Development and the National Question in North-East India
The Ethnography of Infrastructure
Tattooing, Cultural Change, and the Indigenous Apatanis of Arunachal Pradesh
Unbuilt and Unfinished
People as Infrastructure
Infrastructural violence
Lively Infrastructure
Institutional Diversity and Capitalist Transition
From company town to company village
Frontier constellations
| Highly cited | No |
|---|