India plans to build mega-dam to counter China water fears

Proposed blueprints show New Delhi considering the site in Arunachal Pradesh for a massive storage reservoir, equal to 4 million Olympic-size swimming pools, behind 280-metre high dam

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Labourers working at the under-construction site of the Dibang Multi-purpose Hydroelectric Project on the Dibang river in the Lower Dibang Valley district of the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh.

(AFP)

On a football field ringed by misty mountains, the air rang with fiery speeches as tribesmen protested a planned mega-dam — India’s latest move in its contest with China over Himalayan water.

India says the proposed new structure could counteract rival China’s building of a likely record-breaking dam upstream in Tibet by stockpiling water and guarding against releases of weaponised torrents.

But for those at one of the possible sites for what would be India’s largest dam, the project feels like a death sentence.

"We will fight till the end of time," said Tapir Jamoh, a resident of the thatch-hut village of Riew, raising a bow loaded with a poison-tipped arrow in a gesture of defiance against authorities. "We will not let a dam be built."

Jamoh’s homelands of the Adi people are in the far-flung northeastern corner of India, divided from Tibet and Myanmar by soaring snowy peaks.

Proposed blueprints show India considering the site in Arunachal Pradesh for a massive storage reservoir, equal to four million Olympic-size swimming pools, behind a 280-metre (918-foot) high dam.

The project comes as China presses ahead with the $167 billion Yaxia project upstream of Riew on the river known in India as the Siang, and in Tibet as the Yarlung Tsangpo.

China’s plan includes five hydropower stations, that could produce three times more electricity than its vast Three Gorges dam — the world’s largest power station — though other details remain scant.

Beijing — which lays claim to Arunachal Pradesh, fiercely rejected by India — says it will have no "negative impact" downstream.