ABSTRACT
In the sensitive social and political context of India’s border and frontier regions, infrastructure resonates with a unique material agency, fostering a close correlation with ethnicity. This chapter focuses on the imperatives of infrastructure development in a landlocked state. The chapter unfolds how infrastructure build-out in the region is ensnared in a binary space of military vs. civil, hills vs. valley, tribes vs. non-tribes and centre vs. alternative centre infrastructure. It posits that the state approach to building infrastructure in the hills is more of a future investment rather than a response to the needs emerging from the communities. This chapter argues that the concept of modernity framed within the perspective of the state at the behest of the dominant communities amounts to a denial of justice to tribal societies.
