Building “India’s Future Powerhouse”: Discourses of ‘Development’ and Popular Resistance in Northeast India (original) (raw)
Related papers
Dam, ‘Development’ and Popular Resistance in Northeast India
Sociological Bulletin, Sage, 2018
Abstract The policy of the Government of India (GoI) to turn its northeastern region, especially Arunachal Pradesh (AP), into ‘India’s Future Powerhouse’ by generating massive hydel power from almost all its perennial rivers has led to widespread protests in the region. These protests are based on the apprehension that this new ‘development’ initiative of the government would spell disaster to the river ecosystem and the livelihood and cultural heritage of the people of the region. The protests are also informed by the fact that the region is seismically very active, geologically fragile and ecologically sensitive. The conflict between the government’s new logic of development in a region considered as a distant security frontier and the local people’s apprehensions and questions about the character of this development has unfolded a complex discourse entangled in the interplay of issues concerning development, environment, people’s rights and rule of law. Keywords Assam, AP, dam, development, protest, northeast
international Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), 2016
Hydro power generation has been considered as one of the major sectors for bringing about economic transformation for the North Eastern region of India. The potentialities of the region have been explored and the water resources are set to be tapped to meet the ever increasing demands of energy security. The execution of projects proposed and maintenance of the existing projects will prove to be a litmus test for the much hyped 'acche din' for the people of the region. Assam is a biodiversity hotspot and exhibits a unique blend of cultures and traditions of diverse communities many of whom depend on Common Property Resources (CPR) for their livelihood. The paper explores the conflict that might arise from any such attempt that impinges on the right of the communities towards a secure livelihood.
2010
With the Northeast identified as India's 'future powerhouse' and at least 168 large hydroelectric projects 2 set to majorly alter the riverscape, large dams are emerging as a major issue of conflict in the region. Although the current scale of dam-related developments far outstrips anything which took place in the past, the region has been no stranger to dam-related conflicts. For example, the Kaptai dam, built in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in the 1960s, submerged the traditional homelands of the Hajong and Chakma indigenous communities, and forced them to migrate into parts of Northeast India. Over the years, this has led to serious conflicts between the refugees and local communities in Arunachal Pradesh. In the 1970s, the Gumti dam in Tripura submerged large tracts of arable land in the Raima Valley and displaced the local tribal population, leading to unrest. Projects such as the Loktak hydroelectric project commissioned in the 1980s have impacted the wetland ecology of the Loktak lake in Manipur, seriously affecting the habitat of the endangered Sangai (the brow-antlered deer) and the livelihoods of local people. The impending loss of home, land and livelihood has led to many years of opposition to the Pagladiya project in Assam and the Tipaimukh project in Manipur on the Barak river. More recent times have seen major conflicts emerge in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh over the individual and cumulative impacts of over 100 dams planned in upstream Arunachal. Dam-induced floods from projects such as the 405 MW Ranganadi hydroelectric project in Arunachal and the intense people's opposition to the under-construction 2,000 MW Lower Subansiri hydroelectric project on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border have been major triggers for what has now emerged as a major political debate on the downstream impacts of dams in the region. Meanwhile, in the uplands of Sikkim and Arunachal, minority indigenous communites such as the Lepchas and Idu Mishmis have expressed concern about the impacts of multiple mega projects in their homelands. The large dams' juggernaut promises to be the biggest 'development' intervention in this ecologically and geologically fragile, seismically active and culturally sensitive region in the coming days.
Dams and Environmental Movements: The Cases from India's North East
2013
Movements against dams not only counts high among all environmental movements in India but also in the world. India’s North East with its increased emphasis on construction of dams has also triggered number of protests in the region. This makes it necessary to delve into the issue of movements against dams in North East India. When the director of Centre for Science and Environment, Sunita Narain maintained that the strongest environmental protests in India have centred around dams and displacement, a close look at the North East reiterates the fact. The harnessing of hydropower has however led to a lot of resistance from the people of the region. The strongest protests in the region are mainly against the dams that are to be constructed on the river Barak and Brahmaputra. Besides dams on Loktak and Tipaimukh in Manipur and on the Gomti river in Tripura have also invited strong resistance from the people. The major objectives of this paper lie to understand the nature of movements a...
isara solutions, 2019
This study is a social critique of Indian developmental discourse, with reference to construction of large dams as an epitome of development. It will primarily interrogate Lower Subansiri Hydropower Project, constructed at the border area of Assam and Arunachal Pradesh. Large dam construction in Northeast India have initiated serious debates in the civil society in matters relating to culture, environment and livelihood pattern, specifically for the people residing in the riparian areas. Despite mass resistance, significant drawbacks, both social and environmental; Indian government keeps pursuing such large infrastructural developmental projects and in fact circumventing various environmental policies which are the only democratic mechanism to protect the interest of the people. The study includes a multi-sited ethnographic account of the field of contestations; both, at the upstream and downstream villages along the riverbank of Subansiri. This paper establishes how the nexus between government and corporate lobbies legitimises such projects under the banner of ‘modernity’ to cater to the need of ever growing capitalist economy. Drawing from the nature of activism in anti-dam protest in Assam, the article argues the significance of civil society in providing the space for resistance and raising awareness to counter such developmental discourse.
Hydro-nation, Discourse and Discontent in Northeast India, Society and Culture in South Asia
Hydropower is now emerging as an important economic driver in Northeast India. A rapid drive for damming the rivers of the region is underway which is speeding up at a rapid pace after the post-reform period in particular. This article uses the framework of securitisation to analyse the broader development politics in Northeast India. It does so by taking the case of hydropower projects with a specific focus on Tipaimukh Dam in Manipur. Developmental efforts, the article argues, in the Northeast are embedded within the securitised discourse exacerbating conflicts between the state and the people over rights and resources. This article will emphasise on the continuing imposition of securitised discourse in the region and explicates the people's response to it.
Journal Progress in Development Studies 13 (3) ,2013, :195-208, SAGE UK
In recent years, there has been a surge in hydropower projects in the North-east part of India, constructed under the aegis of the national state. Foregrounding this fact, our article conceptualizes North-east India as a 'region' that is not only physiographic in nature but also discursively constructed by history, culture and politics, in the colonial and postcolonial times. We argue that when large developmental projects such as hydropower projects are commissioned in this messy context of the North-eastern region in India, it gives rise to myriad problems of ethnic strife, cultural identity and indigenous rights that reflect a 'regional pattern'. In tandem with these various dispossessions brought about by such developmental projects, there is a slowly emerging political consciousness at the regional level to counter these developmental projects. This is still in a very burgeoning stage. In this article, we have envisioned such a regional level collaboration among various ethnic identity based mobilizations, as a counterpart of civil society. Such an ethnic alliance is an imperative, to balance the 'excesses' of the 'sovereign nation state' and its notion of 'development'.
Nation's body, river's pulse: Narratives of anti-dam politics in India
Thesis 11, 2019
In the 1990s, social movements against large dams in India were celebrated for crafting a powerful challenge to dominant policies of development. These grounded struggles were acclaimed for their critique of capitalist industrialization and their advocacy for an alternative model of socially just and ecologically sustainable development. Twenty years later, as large dams continue to be built, their critics have shifted the battle off the streets to new arenas-to courts and government committees, in particular-and switched to a techno-managerial discourse of maintaining river health. What accounts for this change? This article traces the trajectory of cultural politics around Indian rivers within the larger imagination of the nation, the rise of economic liberalization and Hindu nationalism, and the emergence of environmental bureaucracies. It argues that, alongside being shaped by this context, current anti-dam campaigns also contend with the legacy of earlier social movements, their gains as well as losses. This political field has narrowed the potential for radical critique, large-scale collective mobilization and, ultimately, keeping rivers alive.
Dams have become political symbols of conquest of nature and representative of development in India. Impervious to the widespread critique of development through hydraulic gigantism, the planners in Sikkim have identified cascade development of the perennial river waters of Rangit and Teesta as the channel for modernising and developing its economy. This rhetoric has become questionable after three Lepcha youth affiliated to the Affected Citizens of the Teesta and the Concerned Lepchas of Sikkim, with the support of the Sangha of Dzongu, began an indefinite relay hungerstrike on 20 June 2007 in Gangtok to pressurise the government into revoking the power projects planned on the Teesta. The Lepcha activists' banner proclaiming, 'In the name of development, do not make us refugees in our own homeland', challenges the rhetoric of dams and democratic development in Sikkim. This paper presents an analysis of the contested formulations and perceptions of public interest and participatory development in Sikkim in order to reiterate the need of not ignoring but integrating culture in any project planning.