Janakpur appears as calm as the placid waters of the numerous ponds that dot the town. Fear of Covid-19 is yet to grip the city, even as the free movement of migrant workers between home and their host countries in West Asia and the Arab world continues unabated. Workers are coming home for the festival of colours Phagua and few more days of Lagan, when it’s auspicious to get married.

Pretensions of the conformist civil society in Kathmandu notwithstanding, there is little concern at the intellectual centre of Madhes over the possibility of constitutional amendments. Making a mockery of liberal constitutionalism, the statute was fast-tracked in September 2015 to install the ethnonational chieftain of the Khas Aryas as the prime minister of the country.

Scores of protesters and bystanders were shot dead in Madhes, but the heavens didn’t fall when a majoritarian statute was rushed through the legislature by brute force on the floor of the House. It will not do so now if the charter is amended to elevate another presumptuous politico to the highest post. Madheshis, Janjatis and Dalits have little left to lose and nothing to gain in the game of musical chairs being played at Baluwatar. This parliament is unlikely to do what minorities want and unable to stop what the dominant majority desires.

Engineering contentment

The ambience of Janakpur seems to have changed for the better. Urban roads are wider and smoother. There is less dust in the air. Airlines have increased the frequency of flights and reduced airfare. Mini- and micro-buses ply between Kathmandu and Janakpur through the BP Koirala Highway at regular intervals. For an economy almost completely dependent on remittances, bikas (development) has come to mean better connectivity.

Karl Marx had correctly intuited that technology of production determines social relations—the hand mill gave rise to serfs and feudal lords while the steam-mill created the classes of toiling labourer and the industrial capitalist. The concentration of capital and disintegration of labour made Marx issue the call for workers of the world to unite.

A little later, the Fordist mode of mass production and Taylorism system of scientific management created highly influential multinationals that began to form the world in the image of burger-eating and cola-drinking youngsters for whom freedom meant the freedom to want more of everything. The consequent scramble for markets and resources led to World War II and the Cold War.

Strange as it may seem, Stalin was a Fordist, as were Mao in China and Jawaharlal Nehru in India, who sold dreams of massive dams as ‘new temples’ of development. Docile citizens and overconfident politicos of the post-Fordist 1960s and 1970s led to the emergence of Thatcherism and Reaganomics. Weak governments and strong leaders became the new normal as the meaning of citizenship was limited to that of voting at regular intervals. Easy credit and cheap loans were the major ‘products’ of the Thatcher-Reagan decade.

During the Reagan years, the US national debt tripled from $1 to $3 trillion. Indians had to pledge their gold reserve to pull the economy back from the brink. The buoyancy of the 1990s brought indifferent leaders, as progressives lost all hopes of finding an alternative to liberalisation, globalisation and privatisation. Margaret Thatcher had coined the acronym TINA (‘There is no alternative’) as the mantra of neoliberalism. The idea that markets knew best outlived the era of strong leaders and pliant people.

The technology of ‘production’ has moved so fast since the mid-1990s that it’s difficult to keep track of its implications upon social relations. There is no way for an iPhone user to know about places and people that contribute to the functioning of the device that they hold in their hands. Some of the largest corporations of the world—Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Alibaba—produce very little in the original sense of the term. User contentment is their only production.

With China as the factory of the capitalist world and India as its back office, atomisation and anxiety have increased everywhere—even as absolute poverty is down. Demagogues have emerged to assure antsy individuals that open markets and closed societies can go together if they suspended disbelief during elections.

More physical connections and higher cultural assertions are the new dreams being sold as development. Strange as it may seem, an alarming ascension of the ‘goli maro’ theory of Hindutva and the need for more bikas is often voiced in the same breath, even by respected professionals. In the absence of progressive mobilisation, minorities often respond to majoritarian jingoism with religious obscurantism, which prepares the ground for an inevitable conflict.

Dysfunctional pacifiers

A significant section of the population in central Madhes derives its livelihood from remittances. Protection money in the form of financial contributions or having a family member in the youth wings of political parties is the only way of ensuring security. Food is being imported even as rice fields remain fallow. The dominance of the profit sector in the provision of basic services such as education and health has been continuously increasing. Institutions of the state are redundant when not outright agents of exploitation.

When faced with an acute deficit of performance legitimacy, demagogic regimes often resort to chauvinistic slogans. In order to reduce the acidity of jingoism in places with significant minorities, they sell dreams of development to counter resentment. Connectivity—roads, railways and ships—are supposed to deliver bikas at the doorsteps of the poor. Such a simplistic belief may be noble, but it’s also rather naïve.

While Narayangarh benefitted from the economy of deforestation, land grab, and massive doses of US aid followed by a boom in wildlife tourism, nearby Mugling emerged as a ‘catering town’ in the 1970s and remains so to this day. Besides economic factors, there are socio-political reasons that prevented Dhalkebar and Mirchaiya from becoming Itahari or Butwal.

Janakpur is contemplating its future in 2040 even as the road connecting it with Jaleshwar has remained ‘under construction’ for the last 30 years. Perhaps aspiring to achieve Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) goals is a more worthwhile pursuit than chasing the chimera of six-lane highways crisscrossing the countryside.

Starting today, March 4 is going to be World Engineering Day. Decades ago, a university professor at Aligarh Muslim University, a somewhat beleaguered institution in the age of Hindutva, had told his class: solving problem is what all technicians always do, the job of an engineer also includes the responsibility of preventing an unwelcome situation from arising.

The hyper-connected world needs to reconnect with human values. Janakpur needs to become a harbinger of such hopes rather than dream of being yet another node on the network of ‘smart cities’.