Roads are bitumen covered concrete metaphors of modernity and development, and they materially represent fantasies, collective hopes, and aspirations of future(s). They symbolize movement, connectivity, transactions and transportation, and eminently reflect governmentality. Our article is about Manipur’s connective infrastructures, and it focuses on internal roads, and a border highway that connects Imphal (Manipur’s capital city) to Dimapur at Nagaland in North-east India. We explain the infrastructural deficit within Manipur and decision-making about them being influenced by a hill-valley socio-ecological ethnic distributional conflict. The road links and is part of the uneven development route. We provide an ethnographic account of a truck journey undertaken between Imphal and Dimapur in 2018, and this enables us to understand routinized corruption and the collusion of state and non-state actors therein. The road is the symbol of hope, and a developmental desire, and epitomizes state’s governmentality and developmental project of progress, nonetheless it also gets transformed into the central locale of political protest, ethnic conflict when ethnic groups appropriate it forcibly to erect blockades and organize protests in its arterial space. The roads and highways spatially produce and reproduce (il)legality, (il)legibility, and (il)legitimacy of the Indian state. Our ethnographic research unpacks and invokes the multivalence of roads.

中文翻译：

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选择的道路（未选择）：印度曼尼普尔基础设施的重要性、诗意和政治

道路是现代性和发展的沥青覆盖的具体隐喻，它们在物质上代表了对未来的幻想、集体希望和愿望。它们象征着运动、连通性、交易和运输，并突出反映了政府性。我们的文章是关于曼尼普尔邦的连接基础设施，它侧重于内部道路，以及连接英帕尔（曼尼普尔邦的首府城市）和印度东北部那加兰邦迪马普尔的边境公路。我们解释了曼尼普尔邦的基础设施不足，以及有关它们受到丘陵山谷社会生态种族分配冲突影响的决策。公路连接，是不平衡发展路线的一部分。我们提供了 2018 年在英帕尔和迪马普尔之间进行的卡车旅行的民族志描述，这使我们能够理解常规化的腐败以及其中的国家和非国家行为者的勾结。道路是希望的象征，是发展的愿望，是国家治理和发展工程的缩影，但当少数民族强行封锁和组织抗议时，它也变成了政治抗议、民族冲突的中心场所。在其动脉空间。道路和高速公路在空间上产生和复制了印度国家的 (il) 合法性、(il) 易读性和 (il) 合法性。我们的民族志研究解开并调用了道路的多元性。尽管如此，当种族团体强行占用它以在其主干道上设置封锁和组织抗议时，它也会转变为政治抗议、种族冲突的中心场所。道路和高速公路在空间上产生和复制了印度国家的 (il) 合法性、(il) 易读性和 (il) 合法性。我们的民族志研究解开并调用了道路的多元性。尽管如此，当种族团体强行占用它以在其主干道上设置封锁和组织抗议时，它也会转变为政治抗议、种族冲突的中心场所。道路和高速公路在空间上产生和复制了印度国家的 (il) 合法性、(il) 易读性和 (il) 合法性。我们的民族志研究解开并调用了道路的多元性。