Development Of Infrastructure In Nepal As A Preparation For A War-Making Territory

War is a result of the process of “development,” where development means the “macro-projects” implemented by big international developers to build roads, food-making mechanisms and other basic infrastructure in a certain territory. War is made easy on a day-to-day basis through the use of infrastructure: war-machines are being driven in the modern, well-paved roads, and war soldiers are being provided the most nutritious food. Without a proper network of roads, such wars would not be possible, and without hospitals to treat the war casualties, these wars would not have a steady supply of fighters. Proper roads etc facilitate warfare, even more than providing for the populace a kind of higher quality of life and prosperity. Higher quality of life and prosperity are simply promises made by the macro-style development organizations. These developmental organizations' stated goals of prosperity and higher quality of life seem only to apply for western countries, in the rest of the world these goals have only enabled easy transition to a war-making entity.

Many problematic territories in the world have consistently disproved the link between development and peace. An important reason for the link between development and war may be the “foreign-ness” of development. War is waged in problematic territories with disregard and disrespect for foreign, western infrastructure, the roads are used ostentatiously for war-making purposes, even as this goes counter to the philosophy of the organizations that built these roads. This disregard and disrespect for infrastructure is possible because the infrastructure is not felt to be “community owned” but rather is felt to be “foreign made.” War-making entities seek the continuation of the roads and hospitals so that the war effort can be kept alive, hence, today's war-making entities would rather have the big developers provide humanitarian relief and develop infrastructure so that the war may be continued with ease after the developers leave. Increasingly, war will be stopped just for big development projects, this kind of temporary stop will be the definition of peace, and conflicts are likely to continue for decades if the parties use this model of “allowing the big development organizations into the war-zone periodically.”

Hence we find development organizations are obliged to speak of war out of guilt, because (unconsciously) they are making war possible with their infrastructure development projects. There is a positive correlation between a warring population's war effort and the level of development of infrastructure in that territory. But in today's developing world, the first thing that should provide the people with a common identity is their territory's infrastructure rather than their cultural similarities and natural resources. Hence, it is up to the people to collectively come to own the infrastructure that has made their lives easy. Ultimately, this may mean that foreign-made infrastructure itself becomes the object of contention: the big roads and hospitals are rejected, the food-making systems are ignored for alternatives designed by the community, the power-plants are replaced or reclaimed etc. Collectively making infrastructure would bring about unity between the populations of different territories or identities. The activities generating strong community ownership should be the number one priority within a wider infrastructure development project, rather than community ownership only being encouraged at the end of the project as some kind of added bonus.