Durpai, Arunachal Pradesh: In this tribal village three hours from state capital Itanagar, the lights illogically go down with the sun. A lucky evening brings electricity for a little while. But for the most part, families of the Nyishi tribe spend evenings around the kitchen fire in stilt and bamboo homes, stoking wood burning under a charred pot.
Less than 10km away, power utility NHPC Ltd’s colony glows even through the rain and rises with the mountains—complete with accommodation for 3,000 employees, a school, a hospital, a bank and a recreation hall where children dance to Bollywood numbers every evening. They have come to build the Rs6,400 crore dam on the Subansiri river, which will provide 2,000MW of electricity.
With no power, a family spends its evenings around the kitchen fire in stilt and bamboo huts, in Durpai village, Arunachal Pradesh
While their work will bring light to nearby Durpai and countless other villages across India, the 118ft dam will also submerge the land on which the Nyishis subsist. Takhi Yigiyor, the village president said, “We eat what we grow in the jungles. Mostly rice.” Explaining the reliance on so-called slash-and-burn cultivation, he adds, “We don’t buy anything. We don’t sell anything. This land provides for us.”
Here, at one end of India, mountains cloaked in deep, dense forests plunge into yawning river gorges. In these forests, the state has protected local tribes, about 120 in all, from prying outsiders by restricting access to these jungles. Even Indians need a permit to enter. Shielded from the world, these tribes have survived and kept their traditions and culture alive. But they have not prospered.
Now, with the country hungry for fuel to sustain an 8% growth rate and booming cities regularly facing power crises, the natural bounty of Arunachal Pradesh holds an unexplored promise: hydropower.
There are seven river basins, where 104 dams will generate 55,556MW in a decade. If dam building proceeds as planned, beyond sustaining the country, it will also transform Arunachal from a protected state to the powerhouse of the nation. The state alone will earn Rs8,700 crore annually by selling power to its north-eastern sisters.
For the rest of India facing an acute power shortage—the country needs 70,000MW to meet its current demand—the untapped power potential here is the godsend for millions sweltering in power cuts in cities such as Mumbai and Delhi.
But while the government has welcomed the investment, the local people say they believe dam development is not in their interest. They believe their forests, livelihoods and culture will be destroyed by the coming of the outsiders.
As in industrializing areas across the country, India’s vision for this state and itself rests on buy-in. In Arunachal Pradesh, which borders China, the issue is more acute, due to decades of geographic and cultural isolation.