Commentary | Debasish Hazarika, “Development” at the Frontiers: The Brewing Hydropolitics of Northeast India
The recent uproar over the Etalin Hydropower Project in Arunachal Pradesh has drawn our attention back to the bureaucratic political mechanisms placed by the neo-liberal Indian state on its Northeast region. The construction of a dam always sparks local complications that are hardly noticed at the national level. This multi-layered mutation often goes beyond the questions of environmental sustainability, social desirability, and commercial viability of the projects. Indeed, the Etalin Hydropower Project has brought into stark relief the layered contestations grounded in the political economy of the region.
In 2001, the Indian central government launched a grand scheme to generate 107,000 MW from the Eastern Himalaya region. Over half, 57,000 MW, would come from the frontier state of Arunachal Pradesh, which has been lauded as the future powerhouse of India. The push for infrastructural development under the “Look East” policy, compounded by the Northeastern states’ heavy fiscal dependence on central government grants, has played an important role in the region's hydropower development. The discourse in Arunachal Pradesh is that the state will soon be floating on hydro dollars after these projects have been completed.
From the beginning, the planning for the project was complicated by political realities at both the national and local levels. More than 160 MoUs (Memorandums of Understanding) were signed without much noise, despite the fact that many were signed under great secrecy and with a complete absence of competition. With contracts decided by the state cabinet, local MLAs (Members of Legislative Assembly) were being influenced to ignore the dam’s details.
All of these projects are modeled as Public-Private Partnerships, with Arunachal investing some $1.7 billion USD, according to then-Arunachal Pradesh Power secretary Paliwal, at a time when the state’s entire annual budget for the year 2012-13 was $500 million USD. A Comptroller and Auditor General report released in 2012 revealed that the government of Gegong Apang ignored numerous attempts by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation to sign MoUs. Instead, between 2006 to 2009, the government awarded six huge projects to private players like Reliance Power, Jaypee Group, and the Etalin Joint venture between the Jindal group and the National Thermal Power Corporation Limited. As a result, there are three different kinds of companies venturing into Arunachal Pradesh to develop Hydro Power. The first are large private sector players like Jindal Power Ltd, a subsidiary of Jindal Steel and Power Ltd, that is currently developing the Etalin Hydropower project. Second are the engineering, procurement, and construction firms, with their experience in large scale construction projects. Third are those firms with the sole aim of selling their contracts to the next buyer for profits (Mishra, 2019).
With construction projects awarded to favored contractors, central government agencies like the central cabinet and the Ministry of Environment and Forests outsourced the responsibility of conducting Environmental Impact Assessments, surveys, and clearances to various firms. These firms in turn earn huge profits by manipulating legal guidelines, preparing faulty cost-benefit analyses, and issuing fraudulent clearances. One such recent example is the Wildlife Institute of India’s report on the Etalin Hydropower project, commissioned by the Environment Ministry’s Forest Advisory committee. The report mentions that there is no tiger in the community forest outside the Dibang Wildlife Sanctuary, but the local Idu-Mishimi people in their various letters to the committee contradict the report, saying that they have generational relationship with the tigers of the area and that tigers have always been a part of their folklore. Patrick McCully, while talking about the EIA, rightly holds that “Unfortunately, governments and dam builders have invariably turned the EIA process into a bureaucratic formality, merely another regulatory hurdle which developers must jump before they can get their projects approved.”
There are irregularities at the bureaucratic level as well. District administrators and local politicians play the most crucial role at the construction stage. They indulge in the brokerage of the transportation of the machines along with the safety and security of personnel and materials. Because of the long gestation period of such projects, the companies are dependent on the support of politicians who negotiate with the Gaon Burhas (headman) and the villagers to make deals for formal and informal compensation packages. Without community support, dam construction would not be possible, especially when the land and forests are under community control. Hence Gaon Burhas and Panchayat member's role become significant. Although many of them are skeptical about these constructions, they are too powerless, politically and socially, to face the MLA’s and other politicians. Civil society in Arunachal Pradesh lacks coherence and a strong base. However, the recent post-MoU politics of dam construction has created some space for meaningful political mobilization. For example, in Siang Valley the presence of several forums like Siang Peoples forum, Siang Dialogue, and Siang Bachao Andolan, has made resistance to dam construction comparatively organized and strong (Mishra, 2019).
Frustration with the hydropower projects has sparked grassroots resistance. Many tribal communities, like Adis and Galos in the Siang Valley or the Idu-Mishmi in the Dibang Valley, are opposing destructive development agendas. But when we have a closer look, we see these contestations are more layered than popular narratives of small tribal communities resisting existential threats. Local movements range from opposition to the state to intracommunity conflicts. As the land and forests have community or tribal ownership, the process of land acquisition for such projects involves various levels of contestation. The Arunachal Pradesh Land Settlement and Records amendment bill 2018 has been criticized on the ground that it has got rid of the customary principles of community land holding, thereby making land acquisition from local tribes easier for the government and the companies. The whole process of giving community land for such projects has always been done in an environment of cloak and dagger secrecy. Even some local MLA’s claim to have no prior knowledge of such accusations.
It is difficult to understand local resistance in isolation from local ethnic political dimensions. The opposition to the Siang River dam project has been better organized, partly because the Siang Valley is dominated by the Adi tribe, the second-largest tribe in Arunachal Pradesh. The Adi therefore have sizeable representation among the ruling elites in the state. The same cannot be said for the Idu Mishmi whose existence as a community is now being threatened by the Etalin hydropower project.
The local stakeholder's aspirations for better livelihood and development also play a substantial part in complicating the politics of dam construction. They do not reject the projects right away. They normally want to engage in direct communication with the dam building companies. Their arrival means important employment opportunities for the locals, especially because they are already struggling to adjust to a largely monetized economy. The inability to fulfill basic needs of healthcare and education has forced local stakeholders to look for such opportunities. Indeed, there have been some examples of successful negotiations between both the parties mediated by local MLAs and other politicians leading to the end of protests, such as the Lower Demew Project in Lohit district.
A closer look at the hydro politics in the state of Arunachal Pradesh reveals the layered contestation grounded in the political economy of the region. Neoliberal-developmental logic, mixed with grassroots political realities, has produced a unique hydropower politics in the frontier state. Nuanced analysis of such ground-level opposition challenges the essentialist idea of tribal people standing in opposition to predatory development regimes. Alongside the ills that such gigantic developmental intervention brings into tribal life, it also brings with it a new form of tribal structure and social organization. As a result, a new tribal elite emerges as facilitators of big capital. This is evident across Northeast India, where traditional ownership of the natural resources is constitutionally bestowed upon the people. In today’s atmosphere of increasingly an centralized state and a slow erosion of federal ethos in India, the need to firmly hold onto constitutional protections granted to the states is vital for the protection of tribal rights in Northeast India. The right to community ownership of its land and other resources needs to be protected at all cost.
Debasish Hazarika is a Ph.D. student in the Department of Humanities & Social Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.
To cite this commentary essay, please use the suggested entry below:
Debasish Hazarika, “‘Development’ at the Frontiers: The Brewing Hydropolitics of Northeast India,” criticalasianstudies.org Commentary Board, November 4, 2021; https://doi.org/10.52698/WFWF6006.