In the flurry of responding to demands of ethnic, dalit and women activists, what has been overlooked is the fact that the entire Nepal Tarai and its peoples continue to remain in the margins. If dalits are estranged from the Nepali state for being at the bottom of the caste hierarchy and janajatis for being marginal Hindus or non-Hindu, the majority of Madhesi people of the Nepal Tarai should theoretically have been mainstream on both the counts. For the majority of Madhesi people happen to be Hindu �high� and �middle� castes (although there is a substantial dalit population). However, these two crucial identities have not automatically led to participation of the people of the Nepal Tarai in national affairs nor in the activities of the Nepali state. For much of the 19th and 20th centuries, the Nepal Tarai was seen to be largely a combination of a colony and a frontier in the eyes of the Kathmandu-based rulers. �Colony� because the hill people (whatever their ethnicity) have identified themselves with the state vis-�-vis the culturally different Madhesi of the plains. The idea that the Nepal Tarai is the national granary underscores the Nepal Tarai as a colony because it produced and sustained the �core�, meaning the mid-hills. The Nepal Tarai also became a frontier providing new opportunities for settlement and for striking one�s fortune for the hill nobility. Compared to the densely populated but resource-poor hills, it was a vast frontier, which could be controlled by subjugating the indigenous communities and inhabited by clearing up the dense sub-tropical forests. It is only from the 1990s that these twin ideas have been offset to a certain extent, some of which would be due to the fact that almost half of the 205 parliamentary constituencies are now located in the Nepal Tarai. It would be proper to say that as late as the year 2004, the concerns of the Nepal Tarai and its people have not made it into the national agenda. Core issues have yet to be discussed, starting with the identity of the Madhesi and other communities of the Nepal Tarai in a country whose �self-identity� has always been proposed as mid-hills-centric. There have been political efforts at bringing the concerns of the Nepal Tarai to the fore, but little social-scientific enquiry has gone into the project, including the unique geographical feature of the Nepal Tarai being a long and narrow strip of territory that creates its own challenges to inter-regional integration or bonding. Possibilities of developing hill-to-plain connection throughout the length of the country has been neglected, and for a long time the plains were regarded as merely the space allowing easy transport between hill markets centres and the Kathmandu Valley. Demographic transitions within the Nepal Tarai have also not received adequate attention, and there is a two-dimensional view of the region even though there are so many complexities related to migration, the place of indigenous communities such as the Tharu, the linguistic differentiations, the down-migration of hill communities over the past decades, and so on. Because of overall neglect, the possibilities of utilising the open border with India for economic advancement has also not been studied in depth either. Despite the Nepal Tarai being overlooked in so many areas, the fact is that it is emerging as a dynamic cultural, social and economic frontier for the entire nation-state. Nepal is a rapidly urbanising country and, excluding the valleys of Kathmandu and Pokhara, much of the urbanisation is taking place in the Tarai. The same is true with regard to industrialisation. Easy transport, the possibilities of productive agriculture, issues related to labour and capital, the open border and the social and economic trends in neighbouring regions of India, all these issue will be defining the future of Nepal as a whole in the days to come.