7.4 State-Centered Development

The theory: the state as development's engine — Soviet-style planning to Latin American dirigisme to South Korea's state-led capitalism; in Nepal: the Panchayat-era's state-first development (administration expansion, national projects, the birta-to-state land settlement, the road-and-hydro blueprint), and today's federal state's plans (Units ECO-I 5.3–5.5's planning and budget machinery). Strengths: resource mobilisation at scale; infrastructure; rights universalism. The anthropology's critique: the centre's blindness (the "view from the capital" — projects as maps, villages as blank spaces); the anti-politics machine's career in Nepal (development depoliticising what is political — the exclusion question answered with "infrastructure"); the state's own documentary culture (the card, the register, the tole meeting) as its own intervention.