Damned If You Do

Work on Subansiri hydel project resumes after eight years. Activists bristle, call it betrayal.

- Abdul Gani

Around October this year, mammoth machines lying idle for eight years whirred to life and workers with hand-held industrial tools resumed work. The stalled and long-delayed Lower Suban-Siri Hydro Electric Power Project at Gerukamukh, situated along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border, was back on track; it’s a project the government says will partly solve India’s electricity requirements. But for several organizations, the 2000-MW project in one the most seismologically active areas in the world is a disaster waiting to erupt. Independent experts have been voicing concern over the potential impact downstream of the project on the fast-flowing Subansiri, a wild tributary of the Brahmaputra, where people had been prospecting for gold for centuries. The government says too much time has been lost and, more importantly, all concerns have been taken care of.