Dirty Tracks Across the Border: Global Operations of Extraction, Labour and Migration at a Railway Station on the BiharNepal Border
BiharNepal border; infrastructure and logistics; migration
This article is based on an ethnography of the railway siding at Raxaul Junction railway station, a town on the BiharNepal border, which finds itself at the intersection of a massive logistical exercise by China in the form of the Belt Road Initiative, counter-logistical apparatus building by India and incremental hardening of an otherwise open border by Nepal. The article will analyse in detail the intricate network of the labour market that operates at and through the railway siding. It will also trace the origins of commodities used in the cement factories in the industrial corridor of Nepal that are extracted from some of the most deprived regions of India at great human and social costs. Finally, I will describe some of the latest exercises in logistical operations such as containerisation, opening of a new land port, the Integrated Check Post in Raxaul and operationalisation of a new dedicated freight corridor from Vishakhapatnam port to Raxaul, which is reconfiguring the logistical arrangements away from Kolkata and Haldia port and their implications on labour and labour practices. The Raxaul railway siding will be, hence, studied on multiple scales: global, national and local. The article will also try to understand the transformation of this very peculiar border town located on a unique border. This transformation is creating new labour processes, migratory processes and networks, and new modes of production of workers subjectivities and resistance along the global logistical apparatus and supply chains. It will also open up the possibilities of thinking conceptually about South Asian Border Systems. 2024 South Asian University.
Society and Culture in South Asia, Vol-10, No. 2, pp. 214-231.
Kumar M., Christ University, Karnataka, Bengaluru, India