Opinion India, China and the Brahmaputra front

Last week, the Chinese government started work on the construction of a massive hydropower project on the Yarlung Zangbo, just before the river bends and enters Arunachal Pradesh, where it is called the Siang. The river then flows into Assam, where it is called the Brahmaputra. The $170 billion project, linked to Beijing’s developmental goals in the Tibetan region, is expected to generate 60 GW of electricity, roughly three times more than the Three Gorges Dam. The project has stirred old anxieties in the river’s downstream, especially in Arunachal Pradesh and Bangladesh. Arunachal Chief Minister Pema Khandu has described the Chinese project as a “ticking water bomb”. An increase in the Chinese capacity to manipulate the river’s flows once the dam is constructed could increase the risks of floods in the country’s Northeast, he has said. The fact that very little is known of the project’s storage capacity has aggravated the unease. The risk could also stem from sudden surges in downstream flows — from unannounced water releases or from increased discharge as a result of the warming climate or even engineering errors. Hydrology experts fear that the Chinese project could disrupt water flow to the hydro projects proposed in the country’s Northeast — the region holds nearly half of India’s hydropower potential, over 80 per cent of which remains untapped.

India’s Brahmaputra predicament is unlike that of most lower riparian states. The river gains most of its volume only after it enters Arunachal Pradesh, fed by largely river-fed tributaries in the Eastern Himalaya, such as the Lohit and the Dibang. In the Brahmaputra’s lower riparian regions, the unpredictability of flood patterns is already a big challenge. The fears about inundation due to the river’s changing flows are, therefore, not unfounded. In 2013, India and China signed a MoU on sharing information on river flows. But, by all accounts, Beijing has not always been open to sharing hydrological data. A more effective response to the Chinese dam would be to build up the defences of vulnerable regions in the Northeast. In 2017, when the Yarlung Zangbo dam was still at a planning stage, Niti Aayog had proposed a multipurpose project in the Siang region as a strategic counter to the Chinese hydro station. Besides generating electricity, the project’s storage facility can cushion the Northeast from the risks of being flooded by water released from the Chinese dam. However, work on the Siang dam has progressed at a slow pace, largely because a section of the local population has opposed the project. The Ministry of Jal Shakti tasked the National Hydro Power Corporation to prepare a pre-feasibility report but vital investigations have not been conducted.

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Fears about displacement and livelihood losses have found expression in the opposition to the Siang project. The political class and technical experts must come together to build safeguards and remove such apprehensions. The work on building storage facilities downstream of the Brahmaputra cannot be postponed.