English-Language Documents and Old Trucks: Creating Infrastructure in Nagaland's Coal Mining Villages

Abstract

ABSTRACTIn Nagaland, state attempts to control coal mining are framed as efforts to stop practices labelled ‘unscientific’ by the government. In this article we explore the ways in which communities create their own mining infrastructure built on networks of relations—materialised in English-language documents—and everyday technology—demonstrated in the prevalence of old trucks and improvised machinery. These objects enable livelihoods and supplementary incomes in this region. At the same time, they are also ways of challenging state attempts to control natural resources and for tribal communities to make claims on territory. We focus on coal mining infrastructure, technology and territorial claims in a frontier described variously as remote, inaccessible and underdeveloped, and explore the ways in which practices considered ‘unscientific’ endure and undergird an alternative system of community natural resource management and exploitation.