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Accepted Paper:
Erodible geology and extractive impulses in the Himalayan riverbeds: a history of concrete industry in Nepal
Saumya Pandey
(Ghent University)
I share accounts in which geology is not incidental but crucial to construction industry in Nepal, and is proactively interlinked with the organisation of Nepali politics and economy.
Paper long abstract:
Between 1950-1990, the cement as well as RCC’s (Reinforced Concrete Cement) history came to be technologically interlinked with the geological history of Himalayan riverine sand as a construction material in Nepal. Several experiments were undertaken for the utilization of different types of sand and cement for making the construction material, concrete. This geological knowledge at my field sites that sediments beneath the surface could be utilized as construction material 'resources,' came to set tone for how the natural history came to dominate the subterranean politics of resource extraction and governance in this region. Here, I focus on the thick movable young geology of Churia Himalayas and its hydraulic volatility, that explains the historical instinct behind setting up the concrete industry in Nepal. Based on twelve months of my fieldwork (between 2020/22) around Himalayan rivers, and four months of archival research, I share accounts in which geology is not incidental but crucial to construction industry in Nepal, and is proactively interlinked with the organisation of Nepali politics and economy, where regional history and availability of local sand resources and labour as well as extractive revenue-generating logics inform matters of the environment.