Contribution short abstract:

The paper looks at self-organised energy infrastructure as political organisation beyond the state, based on fieldwork in Northern Pakistan. It argues that both, marginalisation and mobilisation evolve around the provision of basic services, questioning how everyday energy practices become political

Contribution long abstract:

This paper analyses the political role of access to electricity in a context of political marginalisation and chronical electricity shortage (20h of load-shedding/blackouts) in Aliabad, Northern Pakistan. The relevance of infrastructure for producing ‘the state’ and political subjectivities has been highlighted (cf. Anand 2017), yet its importance for non-state political organisation remains rather unexplored. Based on 9 months of ethnographic fieldwork in 2023 in Aliabad (in the Pakistani part of Kashmir), I explore how electricity provisioning gets politicised in (biopolitical) promises, but also through self-organisation that attempts to go beyond state-building and neoliberal entrepreneurship. The paper follows electricity as it triggers large-scale protests and road-blocks, and is being used to web patronage networks. Who gets the conspicuous 24h-supply connections (‘special lines’), and who has to pay electricity bills show political affiliations and social inequalities. However, these dynamics are never pre-determined, since ‘community-led’ hydropower projects have emerged, and international development agencies were investing in private solar powerplants, while projects by state authorities were perceived mostly with hostility and mistrust.

The paper first shows how access to electricity relates to the continuous marginalisation of the region of Gilgit-Baltistan as not constitutionally-recognised part of Pakistan. Secondly, I discuss self-organisation around electricity production and informal line-tapping as instances of protest and (hidden) resistance. I argue that access to electricity becomes a key arena for political contestations, building on notions of the common/community which are induced by neoliberal paradigms and yet have the potential to transcend both state and individualistic responsibility.