Himalayan BRI: an infrastructural conjuncture and shifting development in Nepal

ABSTRACT In Nepal, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) contributed to the articulation of a post-2015 conjuncture involving a new constitution, earthquake reconstruction, an Indian blockade and disenchantment with Western non-governmental organization developmentalism. This conjuncture permitted the emergence of new domestic possibilities, regional configurations of power, Himalayan geopolitical and geoeconomic dynamics, and developmental trajectories involving an infrastructural turn. Considered a frontier zone since the Sugauli Treaty, Nepal has mobilized its own historical, geographical and political conditions, and articulated the BRI as a historical opportunity to liberate itself from India’s market monopoly and domestic political and economic influence by generating a new national discourse in favour of a sovereign, autonomous and self-reliant development path that is already shaping national policymaking, state restructuring, political mobilizations, regional negotiations and Nepal Himalaya landscapes. As such it challenges the conventional opposition between globalized capitalist and imperialist exploitation and national sovereignty.