In India’s northeast, roads are simultaneously political symbols and logistical instruments mediating between peripheries and centres, aspirations and anxieties, citizens and states. Among the most telling examples of this dialectic is the Guite Road, officially notified in 2012 as National Highway 102B (NH-102B). 

The Guite Road follows the stretch from Churachandpur (Lamka) through Singngat and Sinzawl in Manipur, crossing Tuivai river near the Myanmar border, over to Mizoram, covering a 178-kilometre-long distance, according to the gazette notification issued by Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), dated May 16, 2023. Once fully completed, the total distance from Churachandpur to Keifang in Mizoram is set to be about 323 kilometres. 

A vital, though neglected, segment of India’s international connectivity vision under the Act East Policy, this Churachandpur-Singngat-Sinzawl-Tuivai-Myanmar Road serves not only strategic military needs but also supports economic access for dozens of remote tribal villages along the southern frontier of Manipur.

Since May 2023, the ethnic conflict in Manipur has rendered NH-2 – the other arterial highway through the valley – non-viable for thousands of tribal residents of Lamka and surrounding areas. The only viable connection to Mizoram, and by extension to the rest of the country, is NH-102B. In this context, the highway is no longer just about mobility; it is about humanitarian access, emergency medical support, food supply and even refuge. 

Whenever an infrastructure failure takes place, it is often presented as a technical or logistical lapse but the degraded condition of NH-102B is rooted in political disinterest and democratic marginalisation. 

The terrain is challenging, yes, but comparable or worse topographies in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Sikkim have been able to overcome this using engineering ingenuity, geosynthetic stabilisation and climate-smart road-building methods. Why, then, has Manipur’s NH-102B remained a dust track in dry months and a landslide-prone with mudslide track during rainy seasons?

Roads as instrumental rights

The recurring crisis of NH-102B is not just a matter of infrastructure – it is a crisis of governance and constitutional values. Article 21 of the constitution guarantees the right to life and dignity. How can that be realised when roads are impassable, ambulances unreachable, and children unable to attend school? 

When a highway collapses in Gujarat or Tamil Nadu, it makes national headlines and elicits immediate government response. However, when it happens in Manipur, it is dismissed as a terrain issue. That is the tragedy of India’s borderlands – the normalisation of neglect. 

If India is serious about connectivity, security and inclusion, it must start by paving the road to justice – beginning with the battered stretch of NH-102B.

The Guite Road Chiefs' Association (GRCA) – representing 42 villages along the NH-102B – has submitted 17 formal appeals to the Union government’s national highway development body, the NHIDCL, since 2020. Their latest representation (June 2025) states: "We urge immediate handover of Packages 4A-4B to A.K. Shivhare Infra Pvt. Ltd. to prevent another monsoon catastrophe. Each delay costs lives - our people cannot eat DPRs or take shelter in tender documents." 

NH-102B is not just a road but a referendum on how India has been treating its borderland citizens. Infrastructural violence is rarely spectacular – it is slow, every day and deeply unequal. But for the people of Lamka and Guite kual, the consequences are immediate and fatal. We must remember: in the lives of the marginalised, a road is not a convenience but a right. And when that right crumbles under a monsoon sky, so does the promise of democracy.

Especially in borderlands, infrastructure is never just about asphalt and alignment; it embodies state presence, legitimacy, and control. Infrastructure in borderlands carries meanings far beyond engineering specifications. Each road, bridge and communication tower becomes a statement of sovereignty, a thread in the delicate fabric of national integration, and often a flashpoint for competing identities and loyalties.

In regions like Manipur’s periphery, infrastructure projects intersect with ethnic boundaries, historical grievances and contemporary political tensions. The very act of road construction can be perceived as state penetration into traditional territories, altering power dynamics between communities and challenging established social hierarchies. What appears as development to planners may represent disruption for the local population.

NH-102B’s troubled journey illustrates this complexity. Beyond its technical challenges lies a deeper reality: borderland infrastructure must navigate cultural sensitivities, historical memories and political aspirations that rarely feature in project reports. The road’s condition reflects not just administrative failures but the state’s broader relationship with its margins, how seriously it takes peripheral communities’ needs and how effectively it balances development with local concerns.

Roads become symbols of inclusion or exclusion, progress or displacement, connectivity or control. Successful borderland infrastructure requires understanding these layered meanings. 

Until policymakers recognise infrastructure’s symbolic power alongside its functional purpose, these projects will continue facing resistance and delays, like the ones plaguing NH-102B.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

NH-102B’s history is layered with colonial origins, postcolonial public mobilisation, military intervention, and more recently, its entanglement with India’s grand infrastructural vision under the Act East Policy. Yet, on the ground, it remains one of the most underdeveloped national highways – a broken corridor that lives in the imagination more than in material reality.

From a bridle path to people’s road

Guite Road’s genesis can be traced to the early 1940s, when the British colonial administration, anticipating Japanese advancement through Burma, constructed a series of auxiliary military roads, including the Guite Bridle Path, a narrow, strategic foot route through southern Manipur. Though rarely used in combat, it laid the foundation for a permanent infrastructural imagination in the region.

After independence, the path fell into complete disrepair. However, in the 1960s, visionary administrators like Yangmaso Shaiza (then Sub-Divisional Officer of Thanlon) and S. Thangkhopao Ngaihte (IAS) revived it as a jeepable road. What set this phase apart was massive community participation, a rarity in road-building elsewhere in India. Villagers, through community resilience – locally termed as phatuamngaihna (in Paite dialect) – carried stones on their backs through manmade seng (locally-made bamboo baskets) and cleared jungles with whatever tools they had.

This episode challenges the stereotype of hill communities as passive recipients of state-led development. Instead, it stands as a landmark of participatory governance where infrastructure was built not just by the state, but by the people.  

Militarisation and state neglect (1990s-2010)

By the 1990s, as insurgency surged in Manipur, the Indian government reassessed the strategic value of border roads. Guite Road was declared a ‘state road’, and the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) took over its construction. By 1998-99, it was completed and handed back to the Manipur PWD – only to suffer criminal neglect.

By the late 2000s, the road was nearly impassable, with the Tuivel Bridge on the verge of collapse. In January 2010, the Zomi Students’ Federation (ZSF) and ZEPADA conducted an inspection and declared an emergency. What followed was an extraordinary mass protest where 3,000 people physically repaired the bridge themselves. Tragically, K. Lala Valte, a local leader, lost his life during the effort, becoming a martyr for rural connectivity. 

This was not just a protest; it was a performative act of governance, where citizens demanded state responsibility by doing the state’s job themselves. The pressure worked – by February 2010, the road was handed back to BRO for reconstruction.

NH status and bureaucratic bottlenecks (2012-2016)

The Guite Road project exemplifies India’s systemic infrastructure governance failures, where a strategically vital Indo-Myanmar trade corridor component became mired in bureaucratic dysfunction after its 2012 upgradation to NH-102B. 

The case reveals multiple layers of institutional breakdown: Manipur’s year-long NOC delay and subsequent demand to reclaim the project from central control suggests political calculations over developmental priorities, while environmental clearance bottlenecks highlight procedural rigidity over meaningful assessment. 

The road transport and highways ministry and defence ministry’s jurisdictional disputes over funding reflect India’s fragmented approach to border infrastructure, lacking unified command structures. BRO’s resistance to modern EPC (Engineering, Procurement, and Construction) methodology, ultimately prompting MoRTH to transfer the project to NHIDCL in 2016, demonstrates institutional inflexibility hindering project delivery. 

This multi-layer governance paralysis in a geopolitically sensitive region with poor infrastructural connectivity illustrates how bureaucratic inertia undermines India’s Act East Policy aspirations. The case underscores the urgent need for streamlined clearance mechanisms, unified project authorities and federal-state coordination protocols that align political incentives with national strategic objectives.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

NHIDCL takeover and its promises (2016-present)

The NHIDCL’s 2017 commitment to deliver Guite Road by March 2019 represented an ambitious vision for northeastern connectivity that – although delayed – continues to advance India’s strategic infrastructure goals. The corporation’s systematic approach of dividing the project into manageable packages, as it took on the expansion work, demonstrated institutional learning from previous administrative challenges. 

By July 2019, rehabilitation was completed and in October2020, work commenced for widening of Guite Road into a double-lane highway.

Despite its setbacks, the project is a cornerstone of India’s Act East Policy, promising to unlock economic opportunities for communities long isolated from mainstream development. 

According to one of the Guite Road Chiefs' Association (GRCA), the total project cost of this highway is Rs.2,063.15 crore.

While the residents in areas like Suangdoh still call it a “ghost road” – a metaphor that captures current frustrations – it also reflects the communities’ expectations: they demand the same infrastructure standards as rest of India. 

The planned double-laning upgrade signalled long-term commitment by the NHIDCL to transform this route into a genuine trade corridor. 

Strategic irony: Act East Policy’s broken link

The strategic irony of Guite Road’s neglect cuts to the heart of India’s Act East Policy credibility. This humble stretch of tarmac was designed as a crucial link between the ambitious Kaladan Multi-Modal Transit Transport Project, linking Kolkata to Mizoram through Myanmar, and the transformative Agartala-Aizawl-Imphal Economic Corridor. 

Together, these projects promised to redefine India’s engagement with Southeast Asia and unlock the northeast’s economic potential.

Yet, the reality on ground tells a different story. While policy documents showcase impressive connectivity maps and diplomatic summits announce grand partnerships, NH-102B remains a testament to implementation failures. 

The road’s deteriorating condition undermines the entire strategic framework: how can India position itself as a reliable partner for regional connectivity when it cannot maintain basic infrastructure within its own borders?

This disconnect between strategic vision and execution capability reflects a broader governance challenge. India’s Act East Policy depends not on New Delhi’s conference rooms but on functional roads like NH-102B. Until this gap between ambition and delivery closes, the policy risks remaining an elaborate paper exercise rather than genuine regional transformation.

Infrastructure as absence and abeyance

Guite Road’s story is a parable of India’s border governance – shifting from colonial defence to postcolonial neglect, from community-driven construction to bureaucratic paralysis. 

Despite its national highway tag, it remains a metaphor for unfulfilled promises. 

Ferguson’s “anti-politics machine” perfectly captures NH-102B’s technocratic veneer masking profound political dimensions. The project’s presentation as neutral infrastructure development – complete with engineering specifications, environmental assessments and economic projections – obscures the deeply political choices embedded within.

This road is more than infrastructure; it is about rights, visibility and citizenship in India’s most vulnerable margins. Until government authorities move beyond symbolic inclusion and deliver material execution, NH-102B will remain what it has always been – a road that exists more on paper than in reality.  

Langthianmung Vualzong is a PhD alumnus, Special Centre for the Study of Law and Governance (CSLG), Jawaharlal Nehru University, Delhi.

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