Politics

Roads across Manipur are ephemeral, foregrounding the politics behind their development as well as their spatial and temporal nature. Drawing from fieldwork conducted in Manipur, this article analyses contemporaneous state practices of infrastructure and its sociopolitical processes, and offers evidence to understand their materialities, forms, and societal relations. The nexus between politicians, contractors, bureaucrats, insurgents and elites causes frequent suspension of road projects, setting a new form of contingent development practice in Manipur.

This paper builds on the work of Steven Jackson to theorise the breakdowns of hydraulic infrastructure not as exception, but as an ordinary condition of living with infrastructure. Rather than take breakdown to be an interruption in the life of infrastructures, it is suggested that breakdowns be read as an initial condition from which new infrastructures emerge through the labour of maintenance and repair. Drawing attention to the extraordinary labour of plumbers, municipal employees and engineers, the paper argues that the invisibilities of infrastructure are themselves contingent on the invisibilisation and subjugation of maintenance workers, who are placed beyond sight to regularly and constantly work to make water flow again.

The extraordinary nature of the crisis faced by the Congress means that the revival of the party is necessarily predicated upon its renewal. This task becomes particularly onerous as it has to be achieved in the face of a challenge posed by the ruthless hegemonic force controlling politics.

As foreign offices around the world try to make sense of the disruption in United States–China relations, it is useful to step back and see where things might be headed. The uncertainty revolves around some fundmental questions: Will the two erstwhile allies during the first Cold War wage a similar struggle against one another? What will be the normative basis of their rivalry? Is it about power or incongruent visions of the world order?