As an Indigenous community protested a planned mega-dam, India’s most recent move in its ongoing dispute with China over Himalayan water, the air rang with fiery speeches on a football pitch ringed by misty mountains.
By stockpiling water and preventing the release of weaponized torrents, India claims the proposed new structure could prevent China from building a likely record-breaking dam upstream in Tibet.
The project has the feel of a death sentence, but those who are at one of the potential sites for what would be the largest dam in India.
In a show of defiance of the authorities, Tapir Jamoh, a resident of the thatch-hut village of Riew, said, “We will fight until the end of time.” “We won’t permit the construction of a dam.”
The Adi people’s ancestral home in Jamoh’s far-offened northeastern region of India, which is separated by imposing snowy peaks from Tibet and Myanmar, is located there.
According to proposed plans, India is considering building a massive storage reservoir in Arunachal Pradesh that would be equivalent to four million Olympic-sized swimming pools behind a 280-meter (918-foot) high dam.
The $ 167 billion Yaxia project downstream of Riew on the river known as the Siang and the Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet is a step forward for China in this regard.
Although other details are unknown, China’s plan includes five hydroelectric power stations that could generate three times as much electricity as its enormous Three Gorges dam, the largest power station in the world.
Beijing claims that there won’t be a “negative impact” afterward.
China has never intended to harm downstream nations’ interests or impose them on them, according to the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
One of the shortlisted sites for India’s response mega-dam is the village of Riew, which people like Jamoh perceive as the most immediate threat to their lives. The 69-year-old Jamoh said, “We also cease to exist if the river is dammed.” Because of the Siang, he continued, “We derive our identity and culture from it.”
India has kept its concerns a secret, even though there has been a thaw between Beijing and New Delhi, the two most populous countries have a number of disputed border areas manned by tens of thousands of troops. Indian officials fear that China may use its dam as a control tap to cause deadly droughts or defuse the Brahmaputra’s tributary, which flows downstream.
China disagrees, claiming that the hype that refers to the Yaxia Hydropower Project as a “water bomb” is “unfounded and malicious.”
India’s dam could have 11, 200, 11, and 600 megawatts of hydropower, making it the most powerful nation and reducing emissions from its coal-dependent electricity grid. The dam’s intended 9.2 billion cubic meter reservoir would be built, but the precise location of the floodfields will determine how big the reservoir will be.
The Adi people revere the river as sacred, just like Jamoh, for their lush, dotted with orange and jackfruit trees.
They are concerned that the dam will obliterate the world. Before being forced to resign by local authorities because of protests against the dam, Jamoh, who was the former head of Riew, said, “We are children of the Siang.”
Residents are persuaded that dozens of villages would be completely drowned by the dam. The Adi community will vanish from the map of the world if a large dam is constructed, according to Likeng Libang of Yingkiong, a town that even officials predict will be completely underwater.
He continued, “The Adi will completely be displaced.” “We will not be where we are.”
India’s public hydroelectricity utility, NHPC, did not respond to AFP’s requests for comment.
According to Anamika Barua, a transboundary water governance expert at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India’s “dam-for-dam” strategy may be counterproductive. She said that “diplomatic engagement, transparent water-sharing agreements, and investment in cooperative river basin management would lead to more stable and justifiable outcomes than reactive infrastructure construction.”
According to Barua, building mega-dams in Arunachal Pradesh is also dangerous. However, India’s commitment to building massive dams suggests that it will continue to work on this project. Other significant dams overcame local opposition.
