India and Nepal: One Interaction Zone, Multiple Political Economies

Detailed chapter description

Chapter 148 synthesises the cross-border argument developed throughout this volume. Mithila, Vajji and Anga cannot be reconstructed adequately by treating the India–Nepal boundary as either an impermeable line or an irrelevant modern interruption. The border separates two sovereign states with different constitutions, currencies, taxation systems, welfare regimes, regulatory institutions and macroeconomic structures. At the same time, households, languages, pilgrimage circuits, marriage networks, labour migration, rivers, trade routes and cultural markets repeatedly cross it. The result is one dense interaction zone containing multiple political economies rather than one unified economy or two socially disconnected national spaces. The distinction matters methodologically. A historian can trace movement across the border without assuming that the institutions on both sides are equivalent. Indian and Nepali census categories are not interchangeable; Bihar and Madhesh have different subnational powers; the Indian rupee and Nepali rupee are not two versions of one currency; customs procedures apply to goods even where people-to-people mobility is unusually open; and national trade statistics do not reveal the full geography of local border markets. Synthesis therefore requires a layered scale: household, market town, corridor, district, province or state, national government, and transboundary system. The phrase ‘interaction zone’ describes recurring social and economic connections across a boundary. It does not deny sovereignty or imply that India and Nepal form a single political unit. A resident of Madhesh may have kin in Bihar, buy Indian goods, sell agricultural produce through a border market, receive remittances from the Gulf, use Nepali public services and vote in a Nepali municipality. A household in north Bihar may visit Janakpur, employ Nepali labour, trade with a border town and still operate entirely within Indian taxation and welfare systems. The analytical gain is to see overlapping circuits without collapsing the states that regulate them.