Global Infrastructures in the Himalayas: Planetary Urbanization across the Sino-Indian Borderlands

Keywords: infrastructure, urbanization, Asia, techno politics, geopolitics
Abstract Type: Paper Abstract

Abstract

This paper analyzes geopolitical infrastructures in China and India’s Himalayan borderlands. National development policies have promoted the circulation of goods, people, and ideas in these borderlands through the continuous development of road networks and state-led urbanization projects. These infrastructures are settler colonial in nature, and allow for easier access to resources, more effective military control of geopolitically sensitive territory, and the facilitation of racialized surveillance. The paper focuses on three points of comparison: the technopolitical history of infrastructure development in and between the countries, current national competitions for smart and world-class cities that have enabled the political aesthetic control of frontiers, and remote infrastructure development that enables the demarcation of montane borders and the exploitation of natural resources on Indigenous lands. Drawing from new research on the urban politics as well as fieldwork experience, I argue that these infrastructures can be seen as parts of competing colonial technopolitical projects as well as variations on a worldwide system of planetary urbanization catalyzed by global capitalism.