Accepted Panels

Census of India, 2011 notes that 52.11% of Mizoram’s population reside in urban spaces which is second amongst states in the country. Aizawl is resident to roughly a third of the state’s population. This paper is an attempt to bring to light the complex of ‘frontier urbanism’ in Aizawl, Mizoram. Being a borderland city and given its troubled political history, it will seek to fathom how space is curated in terms of class and locality through the articulation of indigenous place-making. Towards this, it will trace the constitutive role of both global and local capital in terms of engendering various forms of labour and employment patterns towards the making of a city its residents reverently call Zawlkhawpui (The Great Settlement). Also, as an ‘oasis of peace’ in insurgency infested and affected North East India, this paper will endeavor to understand how the promise of peace conditions the enactment and re-enactment of order and discipline in the larger social and political landscape of Aizawl.