Making ‘Green Citizens’ in Ilam: Development and Transformation in East Nepal

Abstract

Ilam municipality’s rapid transformation into Nepal’s ‘Green City’ illustrates a development strategy based on the aesthetic ordering of the urban environment. Aimed at creating environmentally conscious citizens, the implementation of green policies has created new platforms and modes of interaction between the state and its citizens and has simultaneously led to the formation of nascent environmental subjectivities. Ilam’s transformation highlights how environmental subjectivities are emerging and different kinds of citizenship are performed, contested and established.