India-China relations: A river runs through it

The dam planned by Beijing on Brahmaputra in Tibet could turn out to be a poisoned chalice for South Asia

- Nimmi Kurian

The new site of geopolitical tensions between India and China could lie at a staggering vertical drop of over 2,000 metres, in the massive gorge in Tibet's Medog County, where the Yarlung Tsangpo makes a U-turn before flowing into Arunachal Pradesh. It is the sheer velocity of these hurtling waters that China's proposed $137 billion, 60,000 MW hydropower project with 300 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity potential seeks to capture.

In the direct line of its furious descent are the life chances of millions living downstream in India and Bangladesh. As India calls into question Beijing's ostensibly green project camouflaged in carbon neutrality pledges, will China's quest for liquid gold prove to be a poisoned chalice for South Asia?

The new project taps into old anxieties about China's resource choices in Tibet, the headwaters of many of Asia's mighty rivers that flow into the most populous regions of South and Southeast Asia. Tibet's fragile ecosystem has struggled to cope with the furious pace of economic activity under China's Western Development Strategy unveiled in 2000. This has brought in its wake assorted problems of deforestation, soil erosion, landslides, floods, acid rain and pollution, especially of water systems. These have, on more than one occasion, spilt over the border and found their way downstream.