QURATULAIN REHBAR
NEW DELHI — In the lush foothills of India’s northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh on the border with China, a hydroelectric dam project with the country’s largest hydropower station faces a growing backlash from local indigenous communities after the recent arrival of drilling equipment and paramilitary forces.
Although the project is ostensibly part of India’s national energy policy, experts also regard it as part of the Modi government’s national security policy relating to China — to the possible detriment of local tribes.
“They came in the middle of the night with drilling machines and soldiers,” Kentu, a resident who goes only by his first name, told Nikkei Asia. “We live by the river and grow our crops there, but the government did not inform us. All we see now are armed forces and machines.”
First proposed by government think tank NITI Aayog in 2017, the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) has recently gained momentum, with on-the-ground surveys commencing in late May. The push has alarmed local communities, after waves of protest first broke out in 2022 in Arunachal Pradesh’s districts of Siang, Upper Siang and West Siang.
“The riverbank gives us oranges, paddy and bamboo — it is sacred,” said Kentu, who lives in Geku in Upper Siang district.
“No money or compensation from the government can replace that,” he said, after a local administrator said a “handsome amount” would be given without elaborating on the exact sum.
“If this dam comes, we’ll be scattered and we will perish as a community,” Kentu said.
At an estimated cost of 1.13 trillion rupees ($13.2 billion), the SUMP will have a storage capacity of 9.2 billion cubic meters and a power generation capacity of 11,000 megawatts. The government has said it will help mitigate downstream water-related threats and bolster India’s energy and strategic security.
Though the project’s funding structure has not been announced, Pema Khandu, Arunachal Pradesh’s chief minister, has said the central government is expected to bear most of the cost.
After the recent deployment of paramilitary forces, tensions have risen in the threatened districts, where there is fierce resistance. Locals say that the Siang River — which Adi tribespeople call Ane Siang with the meaning of ‘Mother Siang,’ while people along another stretch call it Brahmaputra River — is more than just a water source; it is central to their cultural, spiritual and economic life. Villagers gathered at dam sites in peaceful sit-ins hold up banners that read: “No Siang, no life.”
The Indian government says the project is necessary for energy security and strategic infrastructure. However, activists say the narrative of national security is being used to sideline democratic processes and bypass community consent.
Deployment of paramilitary forces rather than police to the proposed dam site has raised tensions among locals in Arunachal Pradesh. (Photo by Pasu Diino)A state government minister recently claimed that 70% of residents living in affected areas support the project. Activists and residents dispute that claim and say they have never been surveyed.
“That figure is misleading,” Dibut Siram, a member of the Siang Indigenous Farmers Forum, told Nikkei. “The dam will affect at least 42 villages — directly or indirectly,” Siram said. He estimates 95% of residents would oppose the project if asked.
Locals say the government is flouting genuine democratic consultation.
“We are demanding an independent body, not a political committee,” said one activist, speaking anonymously. “People deserve to know what’s coming.”
Experts say that multiple large-scale hydropower projects in Arunachal Pradesh — including those on the Siang and Subansiri rivers — are being viewed by New Delhi less as energy initiatives and more as instruments of national security. These plans, long on paper, have gained greater urgency in the wake of China’s dam-building push on the other side of the border.
Arunachal Pradesh’s Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project on the Subansiri river is expected to be fully commissioned by the middle of 2026. (Photo by Press Information Bureau of India)Late last year, China formally approved the new Medog Dam, the world’s largest hydropower project, on the Yarlung Zangbo River in Tibet Autonomous Region’s Medog county. This harnesses the same source as the Siang before it enters India, and was first announced as part of China’s 14th five-year plan in late 2020.
Mirza Zulfiqur Rahman, a visiting associate fellow at the Institute of Chinese Studies, told Nikkei that the SUMP is “being framed as strategic infrastructure … to assert presence in a region where the boundary with China remains unfenced and unresolved.”
He also argues that in both India and China rivers have become tools of statecraft. “Hydroelectric mega dams on transboundary rivers like the Siang are now being turned into sovereignty markers,” he said. “Just as China is doing in Tibet, India is responding with its own version of state-making through dams.”
Arunachal Pradesh is also claimed in part by China, which calls it Zangnan, or South Tibet. In May, the Chinese Ministry of Civil Affairs renamed 27 places in the state, including 15 mountains, five residential areas, four mountain passes, two rivers and one lake.
“When Delhi builds a massive dam and deploys paramilitary forces to guard it, it’s a message to China: ‘Arunachal is ours,'” said Angshuman Choudhury, an expert of India’s Northeastern region and formally with the Centre for Policy Research, an independent think tank. “This is resource nationalization — using infrastructure to assert sovereignty over a contested frontier.”
Locals say paramilitary forces arrived in the middle of a night in May along with drilling machines to begin a ground survey for what will be India’s largest hydroelectric dam. (Photo by Pasu Diino)Choudhury said such infrastructure often has a dual purpose. “They’re pitched as economic corridors, but built to serve military needs in future too.”
Rahman points to a difference between India’s project and China’s dam: “China is using the natural gradients of the Yarlung Tsangpo gorge for energy generation. They don’t need to build a massive traditional dam,” he said. “But India’s plan for a huge structure at that elevation doesn’t make environmental or technical sense. It’s more political signaling than practical infrastructure.”
Choudhury notes India’s deployment of paramilitary forces to the project sites, rather than police: “The police may be deployed, but here we saw the deployment of paramilitaries,” he said. “That is precisely because India does not want China to see that there is internal protest within Arunachal against the dam. That dilutes India’s narrative in many ways.”
As the government pushes the project, thousands of locals continue protesting, and remain determined to block it.
“It’s not just about displacement — it’s about identity, spirituality and cultural survival,” Rahman said. “The Siang is Mother Siang for the Adi people. You can’t just cut a river into parts and expect life to go on. As one villager told me: ‘If you cut a human body into pieces, can it survive?”
The article appeared in the asia.nikkei