Anthony Pabin sits by the Siang river, peeling an orange with practiced ease. “We sell a dozen oranges for Rs 20 and make a hefty profit,” he says. “But we have to think about our children. We do not want them to grow up as refugees, separated from their land.” Pabin, a farmer from Parong village in the Siang district of Arunachal Pradesh, echoes the anxiety felt by the residents of several villages along the Siang river, where a proposed mega-dam has stirred a complex web of geopolitics, development and human rights concerns.
The river, known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet, flows from China into Arunachal Pradesh before joining the Brahmaputra in Assam. For centuries, it has been the lifeline for the region’s Adi tribal community, providing water for their farms and enabling a cultural connection to their ancestors. But now, the river has become the centre of a contentious tug-of-war between two powerful neighbours—India and China.
The 11.2-gigawatt (GW) Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) is planned near Geku village in Upper Siang district. The project has faced opposition ever since it was proposed by government think tank NITI Aayog in 2017. In April 2022, the Centre directed the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) to carry out a pre-feasibility survey to under-stand the technical, economic, social and environmental feasibility of the project. Such surveys are done in phases and involve several tasks such as drilling of the area’s rocks to check for strength and earmarking villages for relocation. A September 2024 report from NHPC estimated the cost of the dam at US $13.2 billion. Across the McMahon Line, China has unveiled plans to build an even more massive 66-GW hydropower project on the Yarlung Tsangpo river, the upper course of the Siang. It will cost $137 billion.
Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Pema Khandu has framed SUMP as a necessary countermeasure to China’s upstream dams. “The SUMP is not just about generating power but also about maintaining the natural flow of the Siang river and mitigating potential flood risks from water releases by China,” Khandu said at a public meeting in Boleng on December 19, 2024. He claimed that 60 per cent of the population supports the project, which the people living around the river outrightly contest.
“Our resistance began in the 1980s when the Brahmaputra Board first proposed a dam on the Siang,” says Oyar Gao, founder of Arunachal Pradesh-based non-profit Siang Peoples’ Forum. “Back then, dams were sold as a means to control floods downstream. Today, the narrative has shifted to concerns about China. But for us, it has always been about safeguarding our river and our land,” says Gao.
Community leaders accuse the government of misleading the public into accepting the project. “NHPC has been con-ducting corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities without seeking prior, informed consent from the communities,” says Gegong Jijong, president of the community initiative Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum (SIFF). He says at least 27 villages in Siang and Upper Siang districts will be directly impacted by the dam.
In Parong village, the epicentre of the protests, women gather every night on the riverbanks to perform traditional rituals and keep an eye on any survey activities. “Two years ago, we intercepted government vehicles conducting clandestine surveys,” says Tabeng Siram, a SIFF member. “We depend on our paddy and orange farms for survival. If the dam is built, we will lose everything.” Tarok Siram, head of Parong, recalls how the district administration created local development committees to rally support for the project. According to Siram, out of the 31 committee members, seven resigned after realising they had been misled. “We were taken to Tehri and Narmada dams to showcase so-called benefits, but we saw first-hand the devastation caused by them. It has only strengthened our re-solve,” he says.
In November 2024, Arunachal Pradesh-based human rights lawyer Ebo Mili spoke against the proposed dam at the UN Forum on Business and Human Rights in Geneva, Switzerland, and was rudely surprised when the Chinese delegation took offence to his statement. “I criticised the use of defence narratives to justify mega-dams,” he says. “But a Chinese representative through diplomatic channels demanded that portions of my speech be removed.” Mili’s activism has come at a personal cost. He has been detained twice in the past by Arunachal Pradesh police for protesting against hydro projects. “The government painted me as a terrorist,” he says.
In December 2024, reports emerged that the Centre planned to deploy Central Armed Police Forces (CAPF) to facilitate NHPC’s drilling operations as part of its ongoing pre-feasibility survey. The announcement triggered widespread outrage. Riew, a village on the opposite bank of the Siang river, was designated by the district administration to host the CAPF contingent. As soon as the notification was issued, residents of the village marched to the Dite Dime bridge over Siang river in protest. The notification instructed the village head to arrange funds to repair a primary school to house the CAPF team.
“We had been demanding the repair of the school for a long time, but nothing ever happened,” says Tabeng Tamuk, village head, Riew. “Now, the officials have asked us to raise money for the repairs to station the CAPF in our village. The deputy commissioner has deceived us,” says Tamuk. Interestingly, in August 2023, NHPC had earmarked `2 crore under CSR for the renovation of the school. Residents of Komkar village, upstream from Riew, have also burnt an effigy of the chief minister to voice their anger over the decision to deploy central forces. The Siang administration, on December 24, 2024, also issued notices to the village heads—gaonburi (head woman) and gaonburha (head man)—of Parong village for participating in anti-dam protests. In 2023, the Upper Siang administration had issued a circular directing government functionaries, particularly village heads, not to participate in any protests or meetings against the dam. “We are not just government functionaries. We represent the people. After the 2023 circular, we offered to resign from our position,” says Ogak Boko, head of Komkar.
Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, an independent researcher on border ecologies related to rivers, warns that the dam-building race between India and China is a geopolitical exercise with little regard for communities or the Himalayan ecosystem. “At the cost of indigenous riparian communities, these nations are engaged in signalling each other by asserting their control over border territories. We have seen how smaller projects like Ranganadi in Arunachal Pradesh wreak havoc in Assam during the flood season. Without any agreement between India and China on river water sharing, if these dams come up, it will only destroy fragile Himalayan ecology and communities living here,” says Rahman.
This was first published in the 16-31 January, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth