“Our Land is the only space from where our freedom springs. We are slaves without it”.

– Naga Peoples’ Movement for Human Rights (NPMHR) as quoted by Ziipao in Infrastructures of Injustice.

In a time where historical conceptualizations of peripheries are being re-centred and challenged in academic spaces across disciplines, Raile Rocky Ziipao’s initial book Infrastructures of Injustice: State and Politics in Manipur and Northeast India published by Routledge in 2020 amidst a global pandemic, holds much significance for emergent narratives that highlight the relevance of indigenous epistemologies. Using infrastructure as the by-word to address the developmental discourses present not just in Manipur but also in neighbouring northeastern states of India, Ziipao exhaustively illustrates the way mainstream notions of development, governance, production, ideas of nationalism, socio-political and cultural practices marginalize various sections of Indian society, especially its tribal populations.

Extrapolating from John Rawls’ criticism of the utilitarian understanding of justice which prioritizes common good over a nuanced sense of plurality, Ziipao terms the deliberate negation of hill communities from dominant discourses as an “injustice”. He goes on to trace this injustice through an ontology of roads and electricity: two factors that are identified as crucial in laying bare the complex structures of economic and political power relations. The landlocked state of Manipur (of central focus here) has a history of colonization and territorialization manifested not merely through the logic of British imperialism but also by local forces such as the Meitei monarchical system. From the arbitrary re-naming of tribal lands (for instance ‘Onaeme’ becoming ‘Oinam’ in Meitei) to the hegemonic centralization of economy and market to the valley, the crisis of divide in infrastructure has only resulted in a landscape of contested geopolitics.

 Post-independence heralded an era that witnessed the shift of northeastern states from frontier lands to a more insidious paradigm of development. If in the 1940s hill tribes were seen as elements of “diversity” (Nehru’s slogan of ‘unity in diversity’), the 1950s adopted a militarized outlook (notably AFSPA) which led to unprecedented degrees of violence – a history which even in contemporary times evokes grief. The 1990s however, backed by global stakeholders, saw economic reforms through the growth of transportation facilities, hydropower projects, and multinational neo-liberalized interests. Nevertheless, this exponential transformation, according to Ziipao, imposed a contradiction of values. Referring back to the above quotation, the relationship of people and their land as a philosophical and deeply intrinsic relation is simply brushed aside in the clinical process of ‘nation-building’. Consequently, the inability of the State to address/quell these anxieties of the people leads to a “hesitation” of civic responsibility for public infrastructure.

Ziipao deduces that these irregularities and general attitude of distrust for the state-backed with internal ethnic conflicts of the hill (Naga communities like Zeliangrong, Thangkul or the author’s community Poumai for example) and valley (Imphal) dichotomy, makes construction exorbitantly costly as well as difficult. We see then, the birth of the “unholy trinity” characterized by corruption, an inflated economy of ever-increasing prices, and state plus private (contractors, middlemen) stakeholders. Ziipao breaks down this social fabric of “vested interests” ranging from politicians, insurgents, local leaders, business personnel and so on, going so far as to note that these supposed nameless labels are occupied by one’s very family and friends! To speak then of a politics of injustice through infrastructures is to begin from one’s very position. Not so much as to vilify (like the “scapegoat syndrome”), but to question the very forces that deny recognition of the multi-faceted lived realities of minoritized cultures.

The book in many ways heralds a moment of theory in the history of conflict zones in the northeastern part of India. Through the lens of development and inquiry into infrastructural orders, the book maps the multi-complex layers of not just militarization, political turmoil, and internecine negotiations but also deals with the ideas of state, civil society, and citizenship in the era of modernity.

I was particularly interested in writing a review for a couple of reasons: firstly, as a research scholar seeking to better understand societal structures, and secondly, as a scholar from the very places the book expounds upon. Ziipao’s work, by offering a framework of analysis for networks of relationships between state and non-state, hill and valley, insider and outsider (mayangs), belonging and un-belonging among other constructions of binaries, through the politics of infrastructure in Manipur is revolutionary. It is the right sort of interventionist approach expected, and indeed necessary, for our meditations with the world at present.

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Haidamteu Zeme is a PhD Fellow in the Department of Humanities at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi. Her research interests centre around questions of language, translation methodologies, material archives, indigenous epistemologies, and orality. She hopes to explore alternatives to pre-supposed definitive categories like the “Northeast India” while also re-imagining what concepts like Zomia entail for communities relegated as the “peripheral”. She spends her time mostly with her cat, Thomas.