DOI 10.60531/INSIGHTOUT.2024.2.11| CHANDRAGIRI, DAS: INDIA-PAKISTAN BORDER INFRASTRUCTURE_ INSIGHTOUT 2(2024) 77 As women move to the fringes of the nation state, the space becomes narrower for them to interact and assert their agency. Background During the colonial era, the undivided Punjab region was mostly a British Indian province. As the area’s economy was dominated by agriculture, the natural population distribu­tion depended on the ease of farming, like the fertility and arability of the land. 1 However, British India’s Partition into two countries – In­dia and Pakistan – was conducted on the basis of religion. Moreover, Cyril Radcliffe, a British lawyer who defined the boundaries, did not have sufficient knowledge of the geography, history, or cultural practices specific to India and, therefore, did not take into consideration the realities on the ground. This resulted in the largest mass migration known in the history of mankind, with more than ten million people Introduction relocating and more than one million people killed or missing. 2 Those who moved to India’s Pun­How powerful is infrastructure in regulating our li- jab state set up their lives as refugees in the land ves? The banality of everydayness that surrounds allocated to them by the Indian government, which our spaces tends to mask the role of spatiality that depended on the size of the land they had owned in marks, controls, and manages our existence. Mag- what was now Pakistan. The problems at the new po­nificently designed architecture often captures our litical borders did not end with the migration; rather, attention, evoking awe and admiration. Or if the- they continue to haunt the subcontinent to this day. re is a disruption in our daily lives due to a power Presently, the borders are heavily militarised and de­outage or water shortage, we think of urban plan- marcated with fences wherever possible. ning. Probably, when our favourite place, a park, or a lake is sold to the builders, we might protest and question the authorities. But a closer analysis of the Research Our research explored the changes in the architecture of a place will reveal the macro and infrastructure of the landscape when Pun­micro level control infrastructure has on our subjec­jab became a border state, and we analysed tive experiences. Our field study of Punjab, a state how the infrastructural changes affected situated at the India-Pakistan border, puts into per­the people’s lives. spective the effect of infrastructure on the lives of borderland inhabitants. We conducted ethnography in two border villages of Punjab, namely Mulakot and Audar. These villages 1 G. Krishan,“Demography of the Punjab(1849–1947)”, Journal of Punjab Studies, 11/1(2004), 77–92. https://punjab.global.ucsb.edu/ sites/secure.lsit.ucsb.edu.gisp.d7_sp/files/sitefiles/journals/volume11/no1/6_krishan.pdf(accessed 14 May 2024). 2 D. Tripathi and S. Chaturvedi,“South Asia: Boundaries, Borders and Beyond”, Journal of Borderlands Studies , 35/2(2020, publis­hed online 2019), 173–181, https://doi.org/10.1080/08865655.2019.1669483.