Dam(n)ing the hills
Indigeneity, American aid, and Cold War politics in the Kaptai Dam, East Pakistan, 1957-1964
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3650641 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Angma Dey Jhala (0000-0002-1662-1691, Bentley University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2023 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 70-99 |
| Publication date | 2023-01-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Modern Asian Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0026-749X • E-ISSN: 1469-8099 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0026749x21000561 |
| OpenAlex | W4224248070 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 16 |
In the late 1950s, work began on the Kaptai hydroelectric dam, a massive project in the verdant Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT), an area bordering northeast India, east Pakistan (today Bangladesh), and Burma (now Myanmar), largely populated by indigenous hill communities. At the time, the CHT was situated in newly created East Pakistan, and Kaptai had become a focal site for the development of hydroelectric power. In the process, Pakistan relied upon international networks, including global aid organizations and American multinational construction firms, to fulfil its development dreams; in return the United States found a useful ally to contain Soviet influence and the growth of communism in Asia. In the high stakes exchange of economic aid for political alliance-making, East Pakistani administrators, US State Department officials, and American corporations became inherently entwined in a shared vision of development, to the detriment of local ecologies and the indigenous peoples who lived within them. This article will explore how both the public and private sectors used the language of primitivity, wildness, and atavism to marginalize minority 'tribal' populations in the devastating name of development and modernity
Alliance · Communism · Economic growth · Economy · Ethnology · Geography · Hydroelectricity · Indigenous · Multinational corporation · Political science · Politics · Sociology · State (computer science · Asian Geopolitics and Ethnography · Bangladesh Politics, Society, and Development · Law · Politics and Conflicts in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Middle East
Global Development
Dynamics of Strategies for Survival of the Indigenous People in Southeastern Bangladesh
Politics of Identities and Resources in Chittagong Hill Tracts, Bangladesh
Deluge amidst conflict
The Tyranny of the Majority in Bangladesh
The Great Game Anew
Moving Watersheds, Borderless Maps, and Imperial Geography in India's Northwestern Himalaya
On the borders of Southeast Asia
The Excluded Areas of Assam
Geographies of Knowing, Geographies of Ignorance
A Politics of Nudity
The Invention of the 'Jummas
Tangled Lands
Illegal Border Crossers and Unruly Citizens
| Citations per year | 0.67 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2023 - 2026 (4) |
| Highly cited | No |