{"id":37174,"date":"2024-09-04T11:30:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T11:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=37174"},"modified":"2024-09-10T13:51:18","modified_gmt":"2024-09-10T13:51:18","slug":"indias-new-mega-dam-will-roil-lives-downstream-with-wild-swings-in-water-flow-every-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/indias-new-mega-dam-will-roil-lives-downstream-with-wild-swings-in-water-flow-every-day\/","title":{"rendered":"India\u2019s new mega-dam will roil lives downstream with wild swings in water flow every\u00a0day"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Parag Jyoti Saikia<\/a>, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHey Rupam, open the door. Take this fish,\u201d a woman yelled from outside. I was sitting in the kitchen at my friend Rupam\u2019s house in rural northeast India. It was the heart of monsoon season, and rain had been falling since morning. The woman must have been shouting because the noise of the rain on the tin roof muted everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The aunty who lived next door stood outside with a large bowl of Boriala fish<\/a>. Her husband had gone fishing on the Subansiri River<\/a>, which flows next to the village, and he had fished all evening. \u201cMy husband cannot stay indoors in this weather,\u201d she said in Assamese, the local language. \u201cYou can catch a lot of fish during this time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The monsoon season<\/a> has long brought a bounty of fish from May to September for people living downstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this is likely to change once the Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project<\/a>, one of the largest hydropower dams in India, is completed upstream. Expected to be fully operational in 2026<\/a>, the dam will change the natural flow of the river.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For most of the day, the dam will hold back water, letting only a small amount through, roughly equivalent to the region\u2019s dry season. But for about four hours each night, it will release water to generate power, sending a raging river downstream almost like during monsoon season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dam will not only block the movement of fish, but also change the way people living downstream experience the river\u2019s flows.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"A
A fisher collects his net on a winter evening in the Subansiri. The river is calm and shallow in many places at that time of year, and people can walk across parts of the river. Parag Saikia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In a 2010 report on the likely impact<\/a> of the Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project on downstream populations, experts from three premier institutes of Assam \u2014 the central state of northeast India \u2014 identified several concerns for downstream communities, including flood and erosion risk, earthquake risk, the loss of water flow for fishing and groundwater recharge, and the survival of species including river dolphins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, a decade later, as the dam is nearing completion<\/a>, the central question remains: What will happen to people like Rupam\u2019s neighbor, whose lives and livelihoods depend on the river?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2023, I lived in a village next to the Subansiri River. My dissertation research<\/a> brought me there to study how this hydroelectric dam, under construction since 2005, is affecting communities downstream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Small displacement\u2019 by \u2018benign\u2019 dams<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Northeast India has been the focus of hydropower dam construction since the beginning of this century. In order to secure the country\u2019s energy future, Central Electricity Authority of India<\/a> in 2001 identified the Brahmaputra River basin as having the highest hydropower potential \u2013 63,328 megawatts. It proposed constructing a whopping 168 hydropower dams in the region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This earned the region the nickname \u201cIndia\u2019s Future Powerhouse<\/a>.\u201d The Subansiri Lower Hydroelectric Project was the first project.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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