The paper aspires to engage on the complexity and dynamicity of everyday development praxis of people/communities at Indo-Myanmar border villages, Manipur state, Northeast India, a region characterizes by several marginalities and exclusion with reference to state development parameters (governance) on one hand, and militarization on the other. The objective of the paper is to enhance the understanding of people’s lives and the different forms of governance and development practices at the borders through an ethnographic study beyond the framework of state processes, legal and non-legal, and state and non-state framework. In the first section, the paper will specifically dwell on and how village development initiatives, around basic infrastructure, roads, livelihood opportunities, cross-border mobility, social and ethnic alliances revolve around the production of timber; transaction, taxation, labor, machinery, and other avenues generated, along with other trades from Myanmar without or with minimum assistance from the government. In a section, the paper will specifically discuss the village development initiatives that look at roads (I termed timbered roads) and village infrastructure through a distinctive headman-led development process. This characterizes its differences from other core tribal hill villages. The production cycle and transaction of timber also attract the presence of multiple authorities including the forest department, Assam rifles, police, politicians, traders, NSCN-IM, insurgent groups, and village authorities, and thus in one section, the paper discusses how these different authorities and stakeholders operate around the interwoven power dynamics and are negotiating and contesting to meet their certain interest at the borders beyond the normative understanding of legal & illegal, state & non-state, etc. The paper is a developing chapter of my Ph.D. study generated from the ethnographic fieldwork conducted recently in 2022 & 2023.
