The Janakpur airport is crowded. There is a four-day general strike across the eastern Tarai plains. The highway is blocked, and road travel is impossible. People are keen to catch a flight to Kathmandu, but there are no seats available. Directly outside the one-floor ramshackle building that serves as the Janakpur terminal, the local teashop owner, Jainath Sah, senses a business opportunity, and turns entrepreneur for the day. Using his contacts, he books a chartered flight to Kathmandu, and converts his shop into an airline counter. Sitting on a charpoy under a tent, he proceeds to charge potential passengers – mostly migrant workers who have international flight connections in Kathmandu – double the normal fare, enough to pay the aircraft operator and make a tidy profit. Tickets are instantly sold out.
There are low-key murmurs about how everyone has to end up spending so much more because of a bekar bandh, an unnecessary strike. A young man dissents loudly: "This is not bekar – Madhesi groups have announced the protest. These bloody pahades [hill people] call us dhoti, and bully us everywhere, even when we go to work in Malaysia. We need to show them our power!" There is a call in response from the other end: "You should slap them when they abuse you. Give it back to them and they will learn. That is what we are doing here now."
Raw anger characterises the mood in the Tarai, Nepal's southern plains, which forms about a quarter of the country's total area. Grievances accumulated over decades (or centuries – to be precise, Madhesi activists point out that the situation has been building for the 238 years since the Gorkhali conquests that created present-day Nepal) have this year found a strong, albeit fractured, political voice. Madhesis are people with plains-languages as their mother tongue. They often share deep cultural, linguistic, family and religious ties with people across the border in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. 'Madhes' is preferred by Madhesi activists to the term 'Tarai'. While both are geographical terms, 'Madhes' has a distinctive political connotation, and is generally used to refer to the eastern and central Tarai.
Excluded from the strongly hill-centric nationalism of Nepal, Madhesis have often been seen as Indians. They are discriminated against and remain under-represented across all spheres in Nepal, even as their resources have been used and exploited by the national political elite. The April 2006 People's Movement gave rise to expectations among Madhesis that they would finally be recognised as equal citizens, and find space in the national polity. This encouraged them to mobilise politically. But with the January promulgation of the interim constitution – which was silent on Madhesi concerns such as federalism, and did not provide for equitable electoral representation – Madhesis decided that it was time for confrontation.