“How can they send paramilitary forces here?” asked Taga Tamuk, as he showed me around the government primary school in Riew village in Arunachal Pradesh's Siang district.
The building was abandoned and broken, without even a desk or bench inside. No child was enrolled in the school, and the last few classes were held months ago.
The village had stopped noticing the decrepit structure until they heard that the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party government of Arunachal Pradesh had issued directions to turn it into a camp for armed central forces.
Why were central forces being despatched to this remote, hard-to-reach village in Arunachal Pradesh? “We are not Chinese, nor Pakistanis, nor militants,” Tamuk said. “Our village has not even seen a law-and-order problem. Then how can they send the army?”
A letter dated December 6, and signed by the deputy commissioner of Siang district, had let out the state government’s plan. The forces were being sent to make sure that a survey for India’s largest hydroelectric power project on the river Siang could be carried out – in the face of fierce resistance from the residents.
The Siang flows into Arunachal Pradesh from Tibet, and is Brahmaputra’s main tributary. The residents of Arunachal Pradesh have been opposing this mega-dam on the Siang for years now – previous efforts to carry out pre-feasibility surveys have been foiled before.
“The armed forces are being sent to demoralise and scare us so that we don’t protest,” said Opang Boko, a farmer from the nearby Komkar village. “They know the people will not accept a dam on the Siang. So they want to quell any kind of protest or resistance.”
The proposal to send armed forces is not limited to only the Siang district. Another letter on December 9, seen by Scroll, sent by the state home department to the deputy commissioner of three districts – Siang, Upper Siang and East Siang – said that nine companies of central armed forces along with state forces and women police will be deployed “to implement the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project”.
The government’s move has ignited great anger in the region.
Since December 15, residents in villages along the Siang have taken out several protests against the possible deployment of central forces, with some carrying placards or shouting slogans: No survey, no dam, no army.
Any forcible survey of the dam sites, Tamuk said, carried out under the protection of armed forces, may trigger violence. “We are very sensitive about our own land. That’s all we have. And we cannot lose that.”
A ‘national security’ project
The Siang Upper Multipurpose project was first proposed in 2017 by the Central government think-tank Niti Ayog.
The dam was meant to counter the threat posed by Chinese hydropower projects being developed on the Yarlung Tsangpo river upstream, according to an Indian inter-ministerial technical committee report of 2022, seen by Scroll. The Brahmaputra or Siang is known as Yarlung Tsangpo in Tibet where it originates.
Chief minister Pema Khandu, too, has defended the dam as a way to protect the Adi tribes, who live in the Siang basin, from a massive 60,000 MW Chinese dam that is, however, yet to be built. “Hydropower generation is a by-product of the multipurpose project,” he said. “The real objective of the project is to save Adi society.”
Khandu claimed that the Chinese government, which is not signatory to the international water conventions, “intends to divert water from the multiple water reservoirs to be created under the project to dry regions of Tibet and elsewhere”, leading to a fall in the volume of water in the Siang.
The Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, he said, has been proposed by the central government to maintain natural flow of water in the river all year round and “flood modulation” in case of a drastic water release by China. He did not elaborate on how the project would achieve both those objectives.
However, residents of the area are sceptical about the government’s claim and fearful of losing their ancestral land and way of life. In a statement, representatives of the villages pointed out: “The Siang region's land comprises loose sedimentary rocks and is situated in a [fragile] seismic zone, rendering the feasibility of dams invalid in any sense.”
The Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum, a collective of agriculturists from the Adi community that has been heading protests, estimates that 40 villages along the Siang river – in Siang and Upper Siang districts – will be affected because of the proposed dam.
“Around 13 villages would be submerged and 27 more villages would be impacted indirectly as their the cultivable land will be under water, even if the human settlement is not directly affected,” said Gegong Jijong, president of Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum, a collective of agriculturists from the Adi community.
Bhanu Tatak, an anti-dam activist, said she feared the dam was an existential threat to the Adi tribes, as it threatened to displace those who had been living together in the region for generations. “The dam is also a threat to the rich and rare flora and fauna here,” she said.
When Scroll visited several of those villages on December 17-18, we saw ground-up mobilisation against the dam, with daily meetings and discussions – and great anxiety about the future.
On December 18, for example, in Geku village in Upper Siang district, residents performed Adi rituals to express their strong opposition to the dam project. “These rituals involve cursing and praying for the downfall or death of individuals who supported the construction of the dam,” Taya Ejing, a 48-year-old farmer from the village, told Scroll.
In nearby Komkar village, Sangum Yao, the 70-year-old headman was emphatic: “Even if we die, we will not move from our land.” A rally was taken out in the village on the day we visited, with residents burning an effigy of Chief Minister Pema Khandu before the march.
The villages by the Siang
Riew is a village on the slopes of a hill, inhabited by 170 families of the Adi tribe. The Siang flows right below the village.
While their houses are at a height of 5-6 km from the river, Riew’s residents grow their food on the banks of the river – from oranges to ginger, cardamom, sweet limes, pineapple and the all-important paddy that makes them self-sufficient.
The proposed 11,000 megawatt dam will wash away most of their fields and ancestral land, claimed Riew’s residents and village headmen.
“We have lived our whole lives here, I am the tenth generation [of my family],” Reneg Tangu, a 67-year-old woman told Scroll, as she carried sheafs of dry paddy from her verandah into the godown in her traditional thatched-roof Adi home. “The dam will take away all our land, paddy fields, orange trees. Some say the dam will also submerge our homes. Where will we go?”
Tangu’s daughter, who declined to be identified, was worried about the presence of troops in the school. “We might face difficulty collecting firewood, roaming around in our own village.”
The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation has selected three sites – Uggeng, Ditte Dimme and Parong – along the Siang river to assess if the dam is feasible in this area.
As we reached Parong, across the river from Riew, on the morning of December 18, a 60-year-old farmer, Tabeng Siram, welcomed us with these words: “You are in a submerged area.”
Siram explained that two senior officials – the Siang deputy commissioner and the chief engineer of the Arunachal hydropower development department– had visited the village on October 6.
“They told us that the [height of the reservoir] will be as high as our village school, so our fields will be under water,” Tabeng Siram said.
His son, Dubit, said that they did not need the kind of development the government was planning for them.
“In two months, we cultivate paddy and grow vegetables and that is enough for the whole year,” he said. “We don’t need development. We don’t need money. We can survive without money. That’s why we are protesting. We don’t need dams that will take our land, our life.”
Scroll spoke to over 40 residents from the Geku, Parong, Komkar and Riew villages, most of whom expressed their objections to the mega-dam. They refuted the government’s claim that only a minority was opposing the hydropower project.
“If most of us agree to the dam, why is the government sending forces?” asked Tasong Jamoh, a resident of Riew village who has been leading anti-dam protests.“People don’t want a dam here. For our own land, we are ready to die. The dam will turn us into refugees like Hajongs and Chakmas in our own land.”
The Chakmas, mostly Buddhists, settled in Arunachal Pradesh in the 1960s when parts of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) where they originally lived were submerged by the Kaptai dam. The Hindu Hajongs had migrated from East Pakistan around the same time because of alleged religious persecution.
‘Efforts to divide us’
While the consent of the village councils is needed before a project of this nature gets forest clearance, the newly amended Forest (Conservation) Amendment Act, 2023, allows the Centre to divert forests for strategic projects within 100 km of India’s international borders – without the need for any forest clearance.
Meetings of several village councils in the last few years have been held in the region, with villagers expressing their opposition to the dam.
Nevertheless, the government has persisted. Residents of the Siang Valley said the government was now trying to drive a wedge between them by inviting some residents to take part in subcommittees formed for each village.
Taso Tabi, the elected gram panchayat chairperson of Parong village and a Bharatiya Janata Party member, told Scroll that 70% of the villagers are against the dam while the remaining ones are in favour of carrying out a dam survey.
“Mahaul abhi garam hain,” Tabi said. Things are heating up.
Tabi’s own cultivable land stands to be submerged by the dam. But he was in favour of the survey. “We want the survey to be conducted to estimate the compensation,” he said. “We don’t know how much land will go under the water as exact measurement is not done. If the compensation is not enough and adequate, people will not allow the dam. But we need development and if we speak against the government, kahan se development ho payega? How will development happen?”
Tani Tamut, another Parong resident and BJP supporter, played down the opposition to the project. “Many are supporting the dam,” he said. “It is a national issue, and as an Indian citizen we have to accept and support it. Development aayega toh zameen toh jayega. If development has to come here, land will be lost.”
Tarok Siram, a village headman of Parong village, however claimed that Tamut was in a minority. “Most of the people who want the survey are with the government or have a BJP connection or want money,” he said. “They say they are talking with the government so that maximum compensation is received by the affected families. We don’t need compensation, we need our ancestral land.”
He contested a senior minister in the BJP government’s claim that 60% of the people are dam supporters. “That is a complete lie. Over 90% villagers don’t want any dam here,” Siram said.
Many of the residents wondered why they were alone in their protests – why the downstream communities especially in Assam have not spoken out against the dam on the Siang river.
The Siang joins the Dibang and Lohit rivers at Sadia in Assam, and flows into the Brahmaputra.
“Why is Assam not protesting?” asked Doyir Ete Siram, a farmer at Parong village, whose house will be submerged.
The 60-year-old farmer, Tabeng Siram, agreed. “If there is a dam here, the Brahmaputra will get dry, just like Subansiri or Ranganadi. And if the dam breaks, it would be catastrophic for Assam and Pasighat.”
Experts appeared to share the villagers’ concerns.
Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People said a dam in a fragile seismic region had a “greater downstream disaster potential”.
He said the state government’s claims that the project would protect against the Chinese dam were questionable since a dam on the Siang would bring its own set of adverse consequences.
“A dam on the Siang means that when the reservoir is filling up in the monsoon, there will be very little or no flow in the downstream areas, and into the Brahmaputra,” he said.
Thakkar said sudden changes in the flow of water from the dam are likely to lead to more severe and intense floods in downstream areas. The dam is also likely to reduce the silt and nutrients flowing downstream, which will result in increased erosion along the river course due to silt-free or “hungry water”. He also warned that the project will limit the upstream-to-downstream flow of biodiversity, particularly of fish and other organisms.
“All this will happen even without a Chinese dam.”
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