Hydroelectric dams have been polarising for some time now, mostly because of where they’re located.
In the Dibang valley, in Arunachal Pradesh, the Indian government has been planning to set up the Etalin Hydropower Project over two rivers, the Dri and the Tangon, situated inside the Dibang catchment zone. The controversy around the project has many aspects. One is environmental: close to three lakh trees are expected to be felled to make way for the dam, and the project site is home to several species of wildlife. But while these concerns have drawn the most attention thus far, the dam is also bound to be controversial for its impact on the identity and rights of indigenous tribes in the area, for challenges from an engineering point of view and for its untenable position from a techno-legal point of view.
Read the entire article by Abhishek Chakravarty, Faculty, Daksha Fellowship and Hemant Kumar Neopaney, Former Yong India Fellow at
