ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that the border between India and Bangladesh serves as a site for formal and informal structures of interaction and exchange, with various actors and processes complementing, contesting, and overlapping in their functions and priorities. While the respective national governments seek to encourage cross-border trade and promote economic corridors, these national policies find local reflection in the much-trumpeted establishment of border haats, or official cross-border markets. A close examination of the political processes shaping this border policy reveals both India’s desire to simplify its own edges and the multi-layered and contradictory manner in which this policy is implemented at the border itself. Based upon fieldwork conducted in Meghalaya and Tripura, this chapter examines how the multi-layered infrastructure of border management and governance affects local community interactions and flows of goods, political processes, and cross-border connectivity.
