Stalled Politics and Urban Infrastructure in Kathmandu

HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies Volume 37 Number 1 Article 14 June 2017 On the Road to Nowhere: Stalled Politics and Urban Infrastructure in Kathmandu Dannah K. Dennis University of Virginia, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya Recommended Citation Dennis, Dannah K.. 2017. On the Road to Nowhere: Stalled Politics and Urban Infrastructure in Kathmandu. HIMALAYA 37(1). Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss1/14 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 License. This Perspectives is brought to you for free and open access by the DigitalCommons@Macalester College at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected]. On the Road to Nowhere: Stalled Politics and Urban Infrastructure in Kathmandu Acknowledgements The fieldwork on which this article is based was conducted with funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation and the University of Virginia. The author would like to thank Andrew Nelson and Heather Hindman for organizing this special issue, the anonymous reviewers for their constructive feedback, and Avash Bhandari for his support during the research and writing process. This perspectives is available in HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/himalaya/vol37/iss1/14 On the Road to Nowhere: Stalled Politics and Urban Infrastructure in Kathmandu Dannah Dennis Today Kathmandu holds out the prospect of a During the period leading up to the passage muddle where one loses one’s identity in a maze of of the 2015 constitution in Nepal, the roads dark alleys enticing one to a confused destiny … the of Kathmandu were often interpreted by the streets of Kathmandu are thick with forebodings. city’s residents as symbols of the stalled —K.P. Malla (1967 [1979] 217, 222) constitutional process and of the faltering and Introduction: Planting Rice on the Road to Sinamangal corrupt nature of national politics in general. By detailing specific moments in which the On the morning of July 10, 2015, I was in a café in Dho- bighat, Kathmandu, waiting to meet a friend who was com- inadequacy of roads and the inadequacy of ing down from Chabahil in a tempo. He texted me to let the state were directly juxtaposed in everyday me know that he was running late because a large street conversations, this article calls for sustained protest in the Purano Baneshwor area had caused a major traffic jam. Curious about the protest, I began checking the attention to the interrelationship between urban various Facebook pages and Twitter accounts that Kath- infrastructure and national- and local-level mandu’s activist groups used to coordinate and publicize politics. their activities. Was it pro-Hindu-state? Pro-ethnic federal- ism? Anti-corruption? I was particularly eager to know the Keywords: Kathmandu, Nepal, roads, infrastructure, politics. nature of this protest because, after years of deliberation, a draft of the constitution had been released just two days earlier, and the two-week period designated for the col- lection of public feedback on the draft was underway. As it turned out, the protest was targeting a problem seemingly far more mundane than the questions of representation, citizenship, human rights, and governance which dominat- ed civil society’s dialogues and debates around the forthcoming constitution. The protestors at Purano Baneshwor that morning had come out to demonstrate the abysmal state of the road leading from Purano Baneshwor toward Sinamangal. Ingeniously, they planted rice paddy saplings 98 | HIMALAYA Spring 2017 in the ankle-deep mud and standing water of the road to settings, exploring the ways in which these infrastructures make its impassibility evident. This action also highlighted articulate various political and economic rationalities the absurdity that a major road in the metropolitan capital (Anand 2011; Björkman 2015; Collier 2011; Fennell 2011; of a supposedly modern nation-state was better fit for Larkin 2013). Roads, in particular, are rich sites for investi- agricultural production than for urban traffic. gating concepts of mobility and modernity as they are embedded in particular social and material contexts (Dalako- During my two years of fieldwork (January 2014-Decem- glou and Harvey 2012; Harvey and Knox 2015; Khan 2006). ber 2015), I attended dozens of protests, marches, and In Nepal, the recent construction of new roads outside of demonstrations in the streets of Kathmandu. For groups Kathmandu, particularly of highways that cross the Ne- across the political spectrum, these street protests were an pal-China border, is having major impacts on aspects of life important venue to advocate for their political goals while ranging from public health and food security (Grocke 2016) also demonstrating their level of popular support. Rather to livelihoods and trade relations (Cambell 2010; Murton than offering a detailed typology of street protest,1 in this 2013). In this article, I use the roads of Kathmandu as a article I focus on moments in which the streets themselves starting point for thinking about state-citizen relations at a became the subject, rather than merely the site, of polit- particular moment in the city’s recent history: namely, the ical comment and contestation. Several months into my years immediately preceding the adoption of the constitu- fieldwork, I began to ask myself: “Why is it that when I tion of 2015 (2072 v.s.). During this time, the overcrowded ask people what they want to see in the new constitution, and impassable streets of Kathmandu were a pervasive and the conversation turns to roads?” Residents of Kathman- tangible reminder of the decrepit state. I argue that roads du often expressed skepticism about the promise of the have come to serve as a powerful metaphor for the broken forthcoming constitution, since the government seemed promises, frustrated hopes, and overwhelming sense of unable to provide even the most basic municipal services. inertia that have characterized Nepali politics since the As one taxi driver joked with me while attempting to 1990s. I will return to this idea of inertia in my conclusion. navigate a maze of muddy potholes in Thapatali: “How are Under the new constitution of 2015, the roads of Kath- they going to make a constitution? They can’t even make a mandu will no doubt continue to be ‘good to think with’ good road.” regarding state-citizen relations in Nepal, particularly as In recent years, anthropologists have increasingly turned those relations are inflected by class and region. their attention to the study of infrastructure in urban Figure 1. Road from Purano Baneshwor to Sinamangal. (Dennis, 2014) HIMALAYA Volume 37, Number 1 | 99 Old Cities, New Problems equality to Nepal by working on behalf of the poor and marginalized. For her, the road-widening project was The troubled condition of Kathmandu’s roads during my a shameful reminder of the fact that the Maoists had fieldwork must be evaluated in the light of several histori- abandoned their commitment to the poor and working cal factors. First, urbanization is not new to the Kathman- classes in order to join the political establishment. “Wid- du Valley; the Newars of the Kathmandu Valley developed er roads are the one thing that middle-class people need a complex urban civilization well over a thousand years from the government that they can’t do for themselves,” ago. The influence of Newar architecture, with its spacious she explained. Within the walls of their own homes and interior courtyards and relatively narrow exterior alleys compounds, it is possible for middle and upper-class peo- (galli) is still deeply embedded within the built environ- ple to install generators and reserve water tanks in order ment, particularly in areas surrounding the historic palace to mitigate the problems caused by routine shortages of and temple complexes of Kathmandu, Patan, and Bhakta- water and electricity. Posh housing colonies and apart- pur. But while Kathmandu is not a new city, it has seen a ment complexes are even able to drill their own wells, very rapid increase in population over the past several de- promising their residents a supply of water completely cades. According to the national census, from 1991 to 2011, independent of the municipal system.3 But when middle- the population of Kathmandu itself increased from around and upper-class people leave their homes to go to work 400,000 to over 1,000,000, and the growth rates in the other or to travel around the city, they are forced to navigate cities of the Kathmandu Valley such as Lalitpur, Bhakta- congested, poorly paved streets. Because roads are a public pur, Thimi, and Kirtipur have been comparably high. The resource that everyone is forced to depend on, they rep- adaptation of existing infrastructure and the installation resent one of the few connections between elites and the of new infrastructure has not been able to keep pace with public city. But, as I will explain in more detail later, even this major population boom. the building of roads can be privatized to some extent in The city’s roads must also be understood in the context neighborhoods which have sufficient financial means and of the major road expansion project in 2011, initiated by organizational capacity. then-Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai. This controversial On another occasion, I was out at a bar with two mid- project sought to finally enact a set of reforms that had dle-aged Nepali women, Chari and Meena, who have been passed more than thirty years prior under the Urban well-paid positions in the international development Development Implementation Act of 1977.

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