Talks by Mona Chettri, PhD
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Papers by Mona Chettri, PhD
Routledge India eBooks, Aug 24, 2022
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Landscape Research
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Gender, Place & Culture
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Sikkim in north-eastern India is a small border state strategically located between China, Nepal,... more Sikkim in north-eastern India is a small border state strategically located between China, Nepal, and Bhutan. Two decades of state-led investment in infrastructural development and private investment in hydropower and pharmaceutical industries has transformed Sikkim from a remote border state to a de facto Special Economic Zone (SEZ) where incursions by private capital are masked under state-led development policies. The chapter focuses on Setipool slum, east Sikkim, located near two pharmaceutical factories, to demonstrate how ambiguous land rights and the establishment of pharmaceutical factories have led to spatially contained land booms which replicate nexuses of illegality, claim-making, and exclusions that are characteristic of corporate land grabs. The paper illustrates (i) the liminal origins of development zones, (ii) the networks and, sometimes, unforeseen socio-spatial impacts within and outside development zones, and (iii) the different forms of intimate exclusions that challenge prior assumptions around local responses to corporate incursions.
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Gender, Technology and Development, 2022
Abstract In the eastern Himalayan region of Sikkim and Darjeeling, India, young women migrate fro... more Abstract In the eastern Himalayan region of Sikkim and Darjeeling, India, young women migrate from within and outside the area to work in the expanding retail and service sector. This sector demands very little from them in terms of education, technical skills or financial literacy; the emphasis being on their youth, and supposed socio-cultural and gendered attributes of docility, flexibility and manageability. Simultaneously, technological and infrastructural advancements combined with the influx of cheap fakes of international brands have made borderlands prominent sites of low-end globalization. The informal sector thrives on the back of this rapidly expanding market, the unceasing supply of cheap, flexible and docile labor and the invisibility of laboring bodies and their inherent precarity. However, the informal sector and the attributes that it seeks also create room to maneuver, and negotiate precarity. Focusing on this newly formed but rapidly growing precariat in the eastern Himalayan borderland, and using qualitative data, this paper illustrates (a) how capitalism, through consumption, can create precarious lives and livelihoods (b) the emerging contradictions (empowerment, exploitation) in social and gendered relations as a result of informal employment and (c) the transformation of borderlands into new sites of low-end globalization.
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South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2019
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This book presents a close look at the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on t... more This book presents a close look at the growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic politics on the peripheries of modern South Asia, built around a case study of the Nepal ethnic group that lives in the borderlands of Sikkim, Darjeeling, and east Nepal. Grounded in historical and ethnographic research, it critically examines the relationship between culture and politics in a geographical space that is home to a diverse range of ethnic identities, showing how new modes of political representation, cultural activism, and everyday politics have emerged from the region.
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South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2015
In the eastern Himalayan borderland, state-led initiatives have led to the transformation of pre-... more In the eastern Himalayan borderland, state-led initiatives have led to the transformation of pre-existing patronage networks and placed ethnic identity at the core of regional politics. Based on ethnographic research in Sikkim, the paper illustrates the prolific rise of affirmative action politics and its relationship with ethnic identity, which has altered the social, political and religious landscape of Sikkim. The paper introduces a new approach to understanding borderlands as dynamic political spaces and contributes to a nuanced understanding of emerging forms of political agency and interaction on the peripheries of regional South Asia.
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Asian Ethnicity, 2013
The Darjeeling hills in northern West Bengal, India are being demanded as a homeland for the Gork... more The Darjeeling hills in northern West Bengal, India are being demanded as a homeland for the Gorkha community living in India. While the origin of Darjeeling is steeped in the imperial legacy of the British Raj, the Gorkha, a colonial construct is ironically used as a means to challenge the contemporary political regression and neo-colonisation of Darjeeling. Although the Gorkha identity is deemed as representative of the Nepali community residing in India, it acquires special meaning and importance in the Darjeeling hills, where majority of the people suffer low wages, unemployment, underdevelopment and poverty. In spite of a large working force in the tea estates, economic underdevelopment and political disempowerment is voiced through the assertion of ethnic rather than a class-based identity. Through an examination of the interaction between class and ethnicity, the Gorkha identity will highlight the malleability of ethnicity to extend itself to any situation and the emergence of an ethnic identity from class relations and grievances.
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Geoforum, 2020
Abstract Sikkim in north-eastern India is a small border state strategically located between Chin... more Abstract Sikkim in north-eastern India is a small border state strategically located between China, Nepal and Bhutan. Two decades of state-led investment in infrastructural development and private investment in hydropower and pharmaceutical industries has transformed Sikkim from a remote border state to a de-facto Special Economic Zone (SEZ) where incursions by private capital are masked under state-led development policies. The profusion of pharmaceutical factories and the concomitant corporate land grabs have led to the recalibration of peoples relations with land and the creation of a new layer of rural poor. The paper focuses on Setipool slum, east Sikkim located near two pharmaceutical factories to demonstrate the ways corporate land grabs have altered the relationships between people, land and the state in expected and unexpected ways. Ambiguous land rights and the establishment of pharmaceutical factories have led to spatially contained land booms in Setipool which replicate nexuses of illegality, claim-making and exclusions that are characteristic of corporate land grabs. Land grabs and different forms of intimate exclusions that have emerged within the slum challenge prior assumptions around local responses to corporate incursions and illustrates how even without dispossession, commodification of land can lead to different forms of access and exclusions.
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Development Zones in Asian Borderlands maps the nexus between global capital flows, national econ... more Development Zones in Asian Borderlands maps the nexus between global capital flows, national economic policies, infrastructural connectivity, migration, and aspirations for modernity in the borderlands of South and South-East Asia. In doing so, it demonstrates how these are transforming borderlands from remote, peripheral backyards to front-yards of economic development and state-building. Development zones encapsulate the networks, institutions, politics and processes specific to enclave development, and offer a new analytical framework for thinking about borderlands; namely, as sites of capital accumulation, territorialisation and socio-spatial changes.
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Political Geography, 2020
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Journal of Borderlands Studies, 2018
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Development and Change, 2018
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Gender, Technology and Development , 2022
In the eastern Himalayan region of Sikkim and Darjeeling, India, young women migrate from within ... more In the eastern Himalayan region of Sikkim and Darjeeling, India, young women migrate from within and outside the area to work in the expanding retail and service sector. This sector demands very little from them in terms of education, technical skills or financial literacy; the emphasis being on their youth, and supposed socio-cultural and gendered attributes of docility, flexibility and manageability. Simultaneously, technological and infrastructural advancements combined with the influx of cheap fakes of international brands have made borderlands prominent sites of low-end globalization. The informal sector thrives on the back of this rapidly expanding market, the unceasing supply of cheap, flexible and docile labor and the invisibility of laboring bodies and their inherent precarity. However, the informal sector and the attributes that it seeks also create room to maneuver, and negotiate precarity. Focusing on this newly formed but rapidly growing precariat in the eastern Himalayan borderland, and using qualitative data, this paper illustrates (a) how capitalism, through consumption, can create precarious lives and livelihoods (b) the emerging contradictions (empowerment, exploitation) in social and gendered relations as a result of informal employment and (c) the transformation of borderlands into new sites of low-end globalization.
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Talks by Mona Chettri, PhD
Papers by Mona Chettri, PhD
Simultaneously wide-ranging and focused, Development Zones in Asian Borderlands traces the transformation of borderlands in South and Southeast Asia into a diverse array of official, de facto, and informal development zones. The empirically rich and absorbing collection provides a compelling conceptual framework for such zones, and is particularly strong in its focus on their temporalities and affective qualities. It will be of great value for borderland and infrastructural studies, as well as for scholars of contemporary Asia. - Emily T. Yeh, Professor of Geography, University of Colorado Boulder
Theoretically ambitious and empirically rich, this volume shows how development zones are much more than sites of capital accumulation. As places of economic, spatial and military experimentation, of imagination and desire, they are also critical sites for interrogating how life itself is ‘zoned’ in contexts of shifting geopolitical fortunes. An original and important contribution to our understanding of borderland lives in South and Southeast Asia. - Madeleine Reeves, author of Border Work: Spatial Lives of the State in Rural Central Asia
The final version of the book is available at Amsterdam University Press website: http://en.aup.nl/books/9789089648860-ethnicity-and-democracy-in-the-eastern-himalayan-borderland.html
The ISBN number of the book is 9789089648860
the Eastern Himalayan
Borderland
Constructing Democracy
By focussing on the Nepali ethnic groups
living on the borderlands of Sikkim,
Darjeeling, and east Nepal, Constructing
Democracy: Ethnicity and Democracy in the
eastern Himalayan Borderland analyses the
growth, success, and proliferation of ethnic
politics on the peripheries of modern South
Asia. Based on extensive historical and
ethnographic research, the book critically
examines the relationship between culture
and politics in a geographical space of ethnic
diversity and political contention. The book
explores the emergence of new modes of
political representation, cultural activism, and
everyday politics in regional South Asia.
Constructing Democracy offers new
perspectives on political dynamics and state
formation across the eastern Himalaya.
Chettri makes an important contribution to our understandings
of the role that ethnicity plays in producing democracy in
practice. By pairing rich comparative ethnographic work in
eastern Nepal, Sikkim, and the Darjeeling district of West Bengal
with thoughtful historical and political analysis, Chettri shows
how ethnicity intersects powerfully with subnational, national,
and transnational politics and structures of governance. A
fascinating read that will be of interest to scholars and students
of the Himalaya and beyond.
− Sara Shneiderman, Assistant Professor in Anthropology and
the Institute of Asian Research, University of British Columbia
(UBC)
Ethnicity and Democracy in the Eastern Himalayan Borderland
offers unique insights into the cultural implications of ethnic
politics in the eastern Himalayan borderland. Chettri’s
ethnographic and historical analysis shows how struggles over
ethnicity are integral part of regional processes of
‘vernacularisation of democracy’. The result is a must-read for
anyone interested in the emerging field of the anthropology of
democracy. − Lucia Michelutti, Reader (Associate Professor) in
Anthropology, University College London (UCL).
is transforming a small district headquarters into an urban showpiece. Centred
on religious theme parks and urban beautification, the boom captures
Sikkim’s emphasis on tourism as a development strategy. Growth in hydropower
and pharmaceutical industries within the state, and infrastructure
enabling this growth, seek to reduce dependency on the Indian government
and have turned Sikkim into a ‘backyard’ for Indian capital. In contrast,
Namchi epitomizes the transition from rural to urban space through tourismled
growth, creating a ‘front yard’ exhibit which was recently awarded Smart
City status despite its small size and relative unimportance. This article explores
Namchi’s boom by analysing the politics that drive it, the buildings
and landscapes that capture its excess, and the town’s lived urban spaces. The
authors focus on three aspects ofNamchi’s boom: first, it is crucial for projections
of success in Sikkim and aligns urban transformation with a particular
vision of development actively promoted by the Chief Minister and ruling
party; second, it is not based on resource extraction or agrarian expansion
but on funds transferred to cultivate and reward loyalty in this border region;
and third, it is drawing migrant workers to the town in large numbers, causing
fissures and tensions, and simultaneously creating an emergent, though
uneasy, cosmopolitanism.
implements wide-ranging control over its territory through laws,
regulations, and coercion. As a border town neighboring West
Bengal, Jorethang is a zone of transgression that blurs urban and
rural space, migrant and citizen subjects, and licit and illicit
activities. In this paper, we use a walking ethnography of
Jorethang town and border crossings to make three arguments.
First, as Jorethang has grown the Government of Sikkim has
effectively abdicated enforcing the spatial order it enforces
elsewhere in Sikkim, enabling Jorethang to be ruled—in effect—
by commercial interests. Second, Jorethang’s growth has been
fueled by migrants drawn to work on infrastructure projects, in
private construction, and in illicit cross-border trade. This is an
alternative story of urban growth in a rapidly urbanizing border
state and is in contrast to the highly planned urban development
evident in other parts of Sikkim. Third, Jorethang offers a glimpse
of the bifurcated urban future of the eastern Himalayas. While
model modernity is manifest in showpiece urban areas such as
Namchi and Gangtok, border towns like Jorethang have become
zones to supply, service, and profit from model modernity without
being bound by its rules. Through these arguments we identify
the internal border between Sikkim and West Bengal as a crucial
division between different spatial orders, between the model
development state of Sikkim and the imploding tracts of adjacent
West Bengal. In Jorethang these orders merge bridging the
orderly and disorderly and providing opportunities for
development through delinquency.