The transformative potential of connectivity has led to the construction of two-lane highways in the mountainous region of Nagaland. Inhabited by disparate ethnic communities this hilly borderland region of Northeast India has been susceptible to the infrastructural development of unprecedented manners. Roads are perceived as agents of change for socio-economic growth; however, their construction has a great impact on the environmental, socioeconomic, and cultural spheres. Engaging with this emergent issue this paper explores how the conventional design of road construction can affect the natural-social environmental systems, the livelihoods of people and create geographies of exclusion. The paper succinctly looks at the volatilities created by the large-scale land acquisition, and demolition of homes, assets, and other properties along the new road alignments. It details the processes of compensation for land acquisition, displacement of the tenants/rentiers, and the ensuing politics within the compensatory arrangements made by the state. Considering the abjection following the displacement of people and the emergent sense of borderline insecurity the paper questions the conventional logic associated with infrastructural policies and its aura of sustainable development. The paper traces the intersection between infrastructural projects, ethnopolitics, and the changing spatial landscape in Nagaland while noting how both construction and rehabilitation practices complicate the issues of equity enshrined in the Indian constitution for the protection of tribal regions. Considering these issues, the paper urges us to view the road effect in conjunction with the ‘state effect’ and map how infrastructural developments disrupt, displace and transform socio-spatial environments which have a direct bearing on the lived realities of people. It argues that the perceptions of people and their resilience strategies within such places of construction are conditioned by the changing gradients of land use, and spatial practices heralded by the discourse surrounding infrastructural development and its associated politics
