“China is building roads right up to the border and we have to follow suit.” There is an urgency in the road building activity on India’s borders. These roads, we are told, will secure the nation and bring development to its peripheral areas. In this paper, I go deeper into the many layers, pieces and meanings of what ‘security’ and ‘development’ mean for the state and for the thousands of migrant laboureres employed to construct these roads in the upper Himalayas. I present an ethnographic account of the material construction of a road and the discursive construction of the nation-state. This very mobile ethnography will also touch upon themes of masculinity, the laboring body and migration.
Presentation by Anu Sabhlok (visiting Fulbright Scholar)
Associate Professor and HoD
Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali (IISER Mohali)