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The Union government has bought yet more time from the Supreme Court to decide the fate of dozens of hydropower projects on the Ganga and its tributaries in Uttarakhand. But it now faces similar legal scrutiny for its piecemeal clerances to dams in Arunachal Pradesh. With over 100 proposed hydropower projects in Arunachal Pradesh, the environment ministry has been asked by the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for a comprehensive and cumulative study of all the dams proposed in Arunachal on tributaries of the Brahmaputra and what their downstream impacts would be.
The Uttarakhand projects came under the court's scanner after the 2013 disaster that killed thousands in the hill state. The court asked the government if the projects had contributed to the tragedy. The government quoted several expert panels but stepped back from a decisive call on all future projects, put on hold by the court, pending the environment ministry's plans.
Now, the ministry would have to do for the Brahmaputra what it has principally agreed to do, at least on paper, for the Ganga. The holiness of Ganga has been cited as a reason to maintain an 'aviral dhara' or uninterrupted flow of the river. The petitioners before the NGT, Pradip Kumar Bhuyan and Joydeep Bhuyan, have contended the impacts of large reservoir dams on stems of the Brahmaputra must be understood for the entire river basin and that the mighty river holds as much significance for the northeast region. Their lawyers, Sanjay Upadhyay and Vikram Rajkhowa, have cited the proceedings of the Ganga case to demand similar treatment for the Brahmaputra.
The earthquake in Nepal has also brought back focus, on not only the dams in the western Himalayas but also in the eastern range - a relatively blind spot for policymakers in Delhi.
Several individual hydropower projects have faced legal challenges, as well as ground-level protests which question the green clearances, the impact on biodiversity, safety and displacement. In some cases, the clearances have been found of dubious quality. On many sites, the protests by communities continue.
This government and its Congress-ruled predecessor have been giving piecemeal clearances to individual projects in the hill states. Some cumulative impact assessment studies have been carried out in select river stems of the two states.
Background gulf
The planning for hydropower projects by the power ministry traditionally did not include a prior cumulative assessment of all the dams that would eventually come up in the two states - in some cases, almost 'bumper to bumper'. The government still runs by the assessment carried out in the 1980s, when the Central Electricity Authority did not factor in either environmental, safety or displacement concerns, but concluded that 226 dams could be built in the Brahamputra basin, with a theoretical potential of at least 100,000 Mw. Similarly, more than 100 dams were scoped out in Uttarakhand.
For a decade, the growth of hydropower capacity has diminished due to exactly these reasons but successive Union governments have been reluctant to pro-actively review the hydropower potential of the two regions, based on concerns of environment, displacement and safety in the identified seismic zones of the Himalayas.
Based on these theoretical scoping exercises on hydropower potential, successive state governments in Arunachal have collectively signed more than 100 agreements, with the private and public sectors, to set up projects. These have come to the process pipeline slowly, getting piecemeal clearances.
The reluctance of the government initially led the Supreme Court to intervene, asking for a comprehensive review of hydropower projects on the Ganga basin in Uttarakhand. Now, the NGT has done the same thing for the Brahmaputra.
Yet, almost two years after government expert bodies warned that the dams in the Ganga basin needed a re-look, the Union government has hesitated from taking a hard call and remapping the Himalayan belt's hydropower potential. Several more dams on stems of the Brahmaputra basin are already up afresh for forestry clearance, even as the NGT asks for a comprehensive review.
