China’s mega dam on Brahmaputra worries India

India is worried about a massive dam on the Brahmaputra river close to the border with Arunachal Pradesh that China formally began construction at a ceremony that was attended by Premier Li Qiang last week, Xinhua reported.

- BY S VENKAT NARAYAN

The $167.8 billion hydropower project will be the world’s largest when it is completed. It has been talked about for long, and has raised concerns in India and Bangladesh about the impact it may have on the flow of the river.

The dam on the Yarlung Zangbo (or Tsangpo), as the Brahmaputra is known in Tibet, is being built at the “Great Bend,” where the river makes a U-turn in Medog county before entering India at Gelling in Arunachal Pradesh. The river is called Siang in Arunachal Pradesh.

The dam, which China announced in 2021, will have a generation capacity of 60,000 MW, three times that of the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze, which is currently the world’s biggest hydropower station.

In an interview given to PTI about a week before the dam’s groundbreaking ceremony on July 19, Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Prema Khandu described it as a potential “water bomb” and an “existential threat.”

“Setting aside the military threat from China, it seems to me that this is a far bigger issue than anything else. It is going to cause an existential threat to our tribes and our livelihoods. It is quite serious because China could even use this as a sort of water bomb,” Khandu said.

The Chief Minister said “no one knows what [China] might do,” and if “they suddenly release water, our entire Siang belt would be destroyed”. He expressed apprehension that “in the long run...our Siang and Brahmaputra rivers could dry up considerably.”

Other experts too have flagged the risk of flooding due to the intentional or unintentional operation of reservoirs in Tibet as well as unforeseen events such as dam failure, landslides, or earthquakes.