On the Subject of Corruption: “Community Contributions” and the Labour of Infrastructural Development in Post-Earthquake Nepal

What is it about?

Infrastructural development in Nepal has long relied upon the assumed availability of ‘community contributions’ – unskilled manual labour donated at no cost by the presumed beneficiaries of the project at hand. This article tells the story of a community reconstruction project in the wake of Nepal’s 2015 earthquakes to show how changing expectations about labour and wages accelerated long-standing grassroots concerns about the ‘community contributions’ paradigm. When community members refused to contribute labour for free, they were often labeled as ‘corrupt’ – a tactic used by governmental and nongovernmental organizations to reassert control in contexts where citizens newly empowered by processes of democratic state restructuring sought to change the status quo. Understanding the entangled relationships between disaster, labour markets, and corruption opens new pathways for scholars and policymakers striving to address these critical contemporary issues.

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