antiAtlas Journal #3, 2019 INFORMAL MARKETS AND FUZZY FLOWS IN FRAGILE BORDER ZONES Edward Boyle and Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman In this paper, we examine differences in how fragile borders are perceived by states and those resident along them. As the current policy of fencing indicates, India is conscious of the fragility of the Bangladesh border in Meghalaya. However, local markets on the border show residents able to mitigate its presence, not through ignoring its existence, but in dialogue with the state’s own agents. Edward Boyle is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Law, Kyushu University, Japan. He researches borders and border spaces in Japan, Georgia, and Northeast India, from the perspective of maps and representation, scalar governance, territoriality, infrastructures, memory and heritage, and history. Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman holds a PhD in Development Studies from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Guwahati, Assam. He researches Northeast India, particularly transboundary water-sharing and hydropower, connectivity infrastructure, conflict and insurgency, peace-building, development politics, migration, and cross border exchanges. Keywords: fragile Borders, ways of seeing, visualization, state, local, markets, cross- border exchange, illicitness Acknowledgements The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by Kyushu University’s Short-term International Research Exchange Program, which funded Edward Boyle’s field trips to Northeast India that made this collaborative venture possible. Parts of this research have been supported by Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant Number JP 16K17071. The authors wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for their feedback, which has greatly strengthened the final article. Responsibility for its remaining shortcomings lies entirely with us. Finally, we would like to thank the border residents themselves, for sharing both their stories and their views of the border with us, in frequently trying circumstances. The mandarins reach the road above the market, from where they are taken down to the border. To quote this article : Boyle, Edward and Rahman, Mirza Zulfiqur, "Informal Markets and Fuzzy Flows in Fragile Border Zones" in antiAtlas Journal #3 | 2019, online, URL : www.antiatlas-journal.net/03- informal-markets-and-fuzzy-flows-in-fragile-border-zones, last consultation on février 19, 2020 Introduction 1 Holidays often begin with a harvest, and for the bustling British-era hill station, the the inhabitants of one upland region air becomes suffused with oranges over the straddling South and Southeast Asia, they winter months. Every four days during this start with the harvest of one fruit in period2, the sweet, ripe, scent of the Khasi particular. The arrival of the winter season Mandarin rises above the reek of sweat, to the Northeast Indian state of Meghalaya petrol, and grime at the regular market held heralds the coming of oranges to the holiday in the town of Pynursla, located up 30 km of tables of the province’s devoutly Christian loosely tarmaced road from the India- local population. The orange harvest is Bangladesh border, on the national highway conducted throughout the band of hills which leading to the provincial capital. traverse Meghalaya from East to West. The Attracting locals from the surrounding area southern extent of these hills denote the as well as traders down from Shillong and up limits of both province and nation, from the foothills, for the best part of separating Meghalaya and India off from three months parts of this market resemble a Sylhet and Bangladesh1. While the provincial giant monocolored ball pool, ready for eager capital of Shillong, at an altitude of 1500 buyers, as well as the odd observer, to dive meters, is too high for citrus cultivation, into3. in the valleys to the south leading up to 2 While many of these oranges ultimately borders. Some of this circulation occurs ascend into the hills, others will end up through the institutions of the Government winding their way down to the Sylheti plain of India, as shown by the presence of to be consumed by the inhabitants of “oranges” and “seasonal fruits” in the neighbouring Bangladesh, thereby connecting export data collected at Meghalaya’s official local networks of harvest exchange with the Land Customs Stations. Yet much, and in all circulation of goods across national likelihood most, of these oranges remain within local networks of exchange as they focal point for those gazing at the border. are moved from one side of the national border to the other. Here, a clear References to border “fragility” adopt the “discrepancy” exists between “official view of the state, considering any local discourse [regarding] control of movement of networks of exchange that operate without goods across its borders, and the reality on authorization as providing a challenge to the ground” (Megoran, Raballand & Bouyjou its authority. Yet reducing our 2005). This exchange of oranges between understanding of the border to the state’s communities on opposite sides of the purportedly panoptic gaze restricts our national border taking place all along ability to understand the political and Meghalaya’s boundary with Bangladesh remains economic role of the border itself. Here, “illegible” to the state (Scott 1998). the “fragility” of the border does not imply From the vantage point of India’s national that it has been rendered functionally capital of New Delhi, a distant site of irrelevant by the actions of non-state authority and calculation, this inability to groups, merely that the state’s ability to “read” what is happening at India’s edges shape views of the border is not absolute. leads to them being understood as profoundly While the understanding of the border held “sensitive space” (Cons 2016). For New by New Delhi, that of a policed linear Delhi, the border of the Indian nation boundary standing between the distinct state resembles the skin of the oranges that cross spaces of India and Bangladesh, does provide it: comprehensive, all-enveloping, yet also one blinkered outlook on the Meghalayan delicate and vulnerable to being punctured. border, for its local inhabitants, the The national border in Meghalaya is thus border is also seen through a series of understood as fragile, open to penetration distinct, local, lenses. The various by a variety of unsanctioned cross-border individuals involved in the movement of flows: terrorism, illegal migration, and the oranges and other goods across the national smuggling of illegal or illicit goods. boundaries know the border very well, but Concerns regarding the sensitivity of this their view of it is not entirely shaped by border motivate New Delhi’s interest in its the state. This article will deploy images securitization, seen in the annual of this border region as it is framed for announcements made with regards to fencing those involved in local networks of the entire length of the India-Bangladesh ‘invisible’ exchange in order to elicit a boundary4. The state’s view of the border is greater understanding of how we should view shaped by its concern with maintaining and such fragile borders. restoring its authority there, and in so doing asserting its status as the primary Khasi tangerines I. Fruitful Frames 3 The images selected for this article are intended to provide a visual ethnography of These images provide a means of drawing out the border through which it is possible to the knowledge frames within which understand how the border is seen by a experiences and practices are seen and made variety of people. In doing so, it extends sense of by participants. Collectively, the argument, associated with Chris Rumford deployed throughout the body of the article, in particular, that a border is not able to the imagery is evocative of the border be understood from a single, privileged, markets the article discusses. It offers a vantage point (generally associated with visual representation of the lived that of the state), and that it must be experiences of the people involved in recognized that the meaning of borders constituting the exchanges and spaces of differs depending upon one’s perspective these markets. It is of course recognized (Rumford 2012). This insight has been drawn that the surface visuals accompanying this upon in other research on the Indo- article are only able to offer a partial Bangladesh border, through which it has picture of the border. However, these become apparent that borders are not merely visuals will be supplemented through socially-constructed, but are also practiced knowledge about the nature of borders, in in different ways at specific locations order that their particular manifestation (Shewly 2016; Ferdoush 2018). This paper here is able to be glimpsed, if only seeks to offer multiple visual incompletely. In doing so, such images will representations of “everyday experiences and aid us in showing that there are indeed many practices at the border” (Doevenspeck 2011, “ways of seeing” the space of the border 130), and draws upon a variety of images (Berger 1972). taken by its authors of or at the Meghalayan border with Bangladesh. 4 In addition to adding context to the rules of conduct that constitute them. narrative that is provided regarding the Meghalayan border and its markets, the aim These images hold together the narrative of is for these images to aid in unravelling the article, while the visual metaphors that the themes that the article wishes to the images provide elicit wider meanings and address, and elicit the meaning of the text. contexts within which this narrative is In order to do so, the images used in the embedded. Collectively, they constitute a article are deployed as metaphors in order visual ethnography of this border by to depict certain core themes of the offering the view garnered of and by the article. The use of images as metaphors local communities present in these market enables the article to make space for the spaces, as well as of the exchanges that contrasting perspectives held on the market take place across national borders.