TY - JOUR
T1 - “Silk Road here we come”: Infrastructural myths, post-disaster politics, and the shifting urban geographies of Nepal
AU - Apostolopoulou, Elia
AU - Pant, Hitesh
N1 - Funding Information:
The key role of the BRI in boosting Chinese investments in Nepal, and the striking contradiction between promises and actual on-the-ground impacts is also evident in the case of the Butwal-Narayanghat Road Improvement Project, which interviewees included in the long list of controversial projects. The project is financed by the Asian Development Bank and forms part of the East-West Highway. It has been promoted by Nepal's government as key for connecting urban centres and boosting urban growth through the establishment of ten new “model cities” along its path. After the cancellation of the first selection process 24 24 and following the signing of the BRI MoU, China State Construction Engineering Corporation Ltd. (CSCEC) with the support of GCE Group, a company based in Nepal, 25 25 won the contract in December 20, 18. 26 26 The road is expected to impact 36 households including Indigenous people, and threatens to displace local people who will lose their land. 27 27 In January 2021, with only 2% of the work completed, the project's construction halted due to protests by labourers who went on strike demanding a minimum wage from the Chinese contractor. In March 2021, the conflict around workers' rights violations escalated, leading to a clash between the contractors and the labourers. 28 28
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)
PY - 2022/10/1
Y1 - 2022/10/1
N2 - In this paper, we explain how China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) drives urban transformation in Nepal reconfiguring geopolitical and geoeconomic relations and remaking the sociopolitical, cultural and material fabric of hitherto peripheral spaces. Given that BRI infrastructures materialize in parallel with Chinese-funded reconstruction projects, we pay attention to the role of post-disaster politics to unravel how ongoing urban transformation does not only affect the present and the future but also people's histories and post-disaster memories by treating places of (re)building as empty of previous life and history. By drawing on 16 months of fieldwork, we show that despite the evident role of the BRI as an agent of urban transformation, the materialization of most BRI projects depends on geopolitical rivalries, negotiations, unstable local coalitions and escalating social contestation. We conclude that in the post-disaster era, BRI projects have become new vehicles towards Naya [new] Nepal, along with many other infrastructural myths that preceded the country's modern history. Nonetheless, the Naya urban Nepal that is emerging from the ruins of the past is contested and uncertain, a far cry from the days of the Panchayat regime and the civil war, when such gargantuan projects were rarely challenged by Nepali people. This is the unique trajectory of Silk Road urbanization in Nepal: an ultimate path to reach a long due rural-to-urban transition that is inextricably linked with decades of infrastructural violence and precarity and strongly shaped by people's struggles against the unequal geographies of BRI-driven urban transformation.
AB - In this paper, we explain how China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) drives urban transformation in Nepal reconfiguring geopolitical and geoeconomic relations and remaking the sociopolitical, cultural and material fabric of hitherto peripheral spaces. Given that BRI infrastructures materialize in parallel with Chinese-funded reconstruction projects, we pay attention to the role of post-disaster politics to unravel how ongoing urban transformation does not only affect the present and the future but also people's histories and post-disaster memories by treating places of (re)building as empty of previous life and history. By drawing on 16 months of fieldwork, we show that despite the evident role of the BRI as an agent of urban transformation, the materialization of most BRI projects depends on geopolitical rivalries, negotiations, unstable local coalitions and escalating social contestation. We conclude that in the post-disaster era, BRI projects have become new vehicles towards Naya [new] Nepal, along with many other infrastructural myths that preceded the country's modern history. Nonetheless, the Naya urban Nepal that is emerging from the ruins of the past is contested and uncertain, a far cry from the days of the Panchayat regime and the civil war, when such gargantuan projects were rarely challenged by Nepali people. This is the unique trajectory of Silk Road urbanization in Nepal: an ultimate path to reach a long due rural-to-urban transition that is inextricably linked with decades of infrastructural violence and precarity and strongly shaped by people's struggles against the unequal geographies of BRI-driven urban transformation.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85133240425&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102704
DO - 10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102704
M3 - Article
SN - 0962-6298
VL - 98
JO - Political Geography
JF - Political Geography
M1 - 102704
ER -
