Paper short abstract:

How does aid to Nepal frame its understanding of the 'borderland' and what are the implications of this? We address the relationship between development assistance to Nepal and political processes that gave rise to a politics of the periphery, focusing on ethnic movements and the Maoist insurgency.

Paper long abstract:

Foreign aid to Nepal has been a fixture of the county's political and development efforts since the 1950s. In this presentation, we draw on the idea of 'borderlands' both as a geographical reality and analytic strategy. Nepal occupies a number of borderlands; it lies on the borders of India and Tibet, and the fringes of greater geopolitical orders in South Asia; and internally there are significant political borderlands, effecting its national politics, from those of the Maoist insurgency, to the Madeshi politics of the Terai in the south, and regionalised ethnic politics. Bilateral aid to Nepal has, through various periods in its history, been complicit in marginalising and consolidating these border arenas with a centralised political regime. This paper approaches this political history of aid to Nepal via the prism of the relationship between internal political changes since 1950, and the shifting parameters of bilateral aid, in particular that of British aid. It explores the way aid actors in Nepal framed their understanding of the borderland and of its implications for their policies and activities. As such, we are interested in exploring the complex and contested ways development assistance to Nepal has been intertwined with processes that gave rise to ethnic movements, the Maoist insurgency and the drive for Madeshi autonomy.