In the winter of 2010, I walked down the dusty road to Lampate village (busty), a settlement within the Cinchona plantation in Darjeeling district famous in the neighbouring regions for its oranges. It turned out that I had arrived on what was to be a historic and memorable day for the local people of Lampate busty. It was the very first time that a vehicle had reached their village. Prior to that day, in fact, the people of Lampate busty had had to walk uphill for a fairly long time before they could even reach the nearest motorable road. Although it had only been a test-drive, the driver of the vehicle was commended by the locals with gifts of traditional silk scarves (khadas) and a bottle of liquor, the giving of which was followed by impromptu singing and dancing. I stood there amongst the celebratory crowd, amazed at their level of perseverance and patience in the face of numerous hardships and inequality. For them and for the villagers on the opposite hill, the un-metalled road that had been constructed by the government meant an increase in their connectivity and hence an increase in the ease of transport of their agricultural produce. The old and the young that I spoke to told me how this was ‘development’, that the dusty road signalled the first step towards catching up with other, more developed areas, a privilege that the older generation from Lampate busty had not lived to experience.

This conversation was extremely similar to the numerous others that I had had in east Nepal and Sikkim. Only the context and the location were different, but in all cases it was ‘development’ that everyone coveted. When probed a little further, the idea of ‘development’ that people had could be roughly translated into the construction of infrastructure, health, and educational facilities and the investment in human resources, which would ultimately enable people to uplift their living standards. The level of ‘development’ was always relative and Sikkim was often cited as a ‘model’ for development.