AsCon Briefs
Abstract
This brief examines three key issues around water security in the context of India and China, namely, competing hydropower discourses, framing water security through the rhetoric of ‘water wars’ and whether riverine communities are capable of exercising their agencies. The author offers interesting perspectives by suggesting that damming discourses have been evolving over the years shaped by domestic, bilateral and global factors. The author also argues that it is too simplistic to view China’s ‘Great Bend’ activities only through the lens of ‘weapon in guise’ or within the frame of ‘water wars.’ Lastly, according to the author, the voices of riverine communities are often in the margins of public policies, yet they have agency in the form of resistance.
In December 2024, China approved the Motuo/Medog Hydropower station, a colossal infrastructure project, situated near the Great Bend in Tibet’s Medog county, with an estimated cost exceeding USD 137 billion and a capacity to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of power annually. Anticipated date of opening the project is 2033. The mega dam project is projected as a symbol of China’s commitment to renewable energy and ‘infrastructure capabilities,’ aimed at fast growth of industries, reduce greenhouse gas emissions, create employment opportunities and develop the hinterland. China’s ambitious projections and unilateral behavior intensified anxieties. Its hydro-hegemony caused geopolitical concerns in India and Bangladesh, downstream riparian states. Location of the dam planned, in the Lower reaches of Yarlung Tsangpo, close to the Line of Actual Control (LAC), in the Tibetan plateau, a region with ‘unstable landscape’, ‘an unpredictable land aggravated by human-induced environmental change’, the planet’s ‘largest continental plate collision zone,’, with high earthquake potential, adds to anxieties. The risk of structural collapse could have disastrous effects on downstream communities, including interruptions in the water flow, sediment flow, and the dangers of artificial floods. Apart from environmental concerns, experts point out the insurmountable transmission costs that the proposed dam encounters.
India expressed its concerns and insisted that Beijing should protect the interests of downstream areas of the Brahmaputra. Absence of binding data-sharing agreements between India and China under international frameworks, compounds the situation of uncertainty and lack of credible commitment. The latter has a significant leeway as the upper riparian state. China’s physical infrastructure build-up (road and rail networks and pipelines) in the Tibetan Autonomous Region and modernized military logistics along India-China border, heightens tensions. China’s territorial assertions, accelerates rivalry and competition, in addition to rapid militarization of LAC. The 23rd Meeting of the Special Representatives (SRs) of India and China held on December 18, 2024, required ‘maintaining peace and tranquillity in the border areas, to promote overall development of bilateral relationship.’ The strategic reality is however, different, which underscores China’s flagrant offensive moves.
Damming discourses vis a vis competitive hydro-hegemony
More than a decade ago, in 2013, when the former Prime Minister of India, Dr Manmohan Singh met the Chinese President Xi Jinping in Durban, South Africa, on the ‘sidelines’ of BRICS summit, he raised the issue of ‘trans-border river systems,’ with respect to Beijing’s proposal to construct three dams on the Brahmaputra. India proposed a joint mechanism to look into the concerns about dams on Brahmaputra, in the Tibetan plateau also known as the Water tower of Asia. China was, however, reluctant to accept the proposal. Earlier in 2000s, India and China established a framework of cooperation to share flood-related data every year from May 15 to October 15, from three hydrological gauging stations, Nugesha, Yangcun and Nuxia, on Yarlung Tsangpo. The Memorandum of Understanding on flood-related hydrological data sharing was renewed in 2008, 2013 and 2018. In June 2023, the MoU expired and is currently under renewal. India and China also set up the India-China Expert Level Mechanism (ELM) to discuss these issues on trans-border rivers. Critics however, point out that these frameworks are not legally binding and are insufficient to ‘establish a comprehensive early warning system downstream’ given the current choice of measuring stations. These shadowy ‘neoliberal’ institutions however, fall short of any cooperative engagements between the two competing giants. Mega-dams undeniably, are the symbols of state capability of the two giants.
Modern China’s hydropower discourse emerged in the context of the Maoist model of economic and social transformation (1949-76). Mao’s “War Against Nature”, epitomized how humans must conquer nature and ‘bend the physical world to human will.’ China’s damming discourse during Deng’s period was dictated by the state’s modernization drive and search for alternative sources of power. China’s emerging hydropower discourse in the 21st century was precipitated by global development discourse. The United Nations Symposium on Hydropower and Sustainable Development, held in December 2004 was influential in this regard. China’s drive for dam building shifted from inland rivers to trans-border river basins flowing through China’s borderlands that further flow through South Asia, Southeast Asia and Central Asia.
India has not been left behind. Post-independence, governments charted out the contours of state development through multipurpose hydraulic projects. Advocates and state-planners eulogized large-scale dams as the ‘temples of modern India,’ pivotal for socio-economic prosperity and national security. The Seventh Schedule of India’s Constitution says, “Water that is to say, water supplies, irrigation and canals, drainage and embankments, water storage and water power” is a matter of state legislation. However, a supplementary clause in Entry 56 of List I, enables the Union government to control ‘regulation and development of inter-state rivers and river valleys if declared by the Parliament to be expedient in the public interest.’ Large-scale untapped hydropower resources in the Brahmaputra basin drew enormous attention from stakeholders in the bureaucracy. The basin has a potential of about 41 percent for hydropower.
India remains wary of China’s hydro-hegemonic ambitions and forged ahead with countermeasures. The Siang Upper Multipurpose hydroelectric project in Arunachal Pradesh, with an estimated capacity of 11,000 Megawatt and an estimated cost of USD 13.2 billion, counters China’s upstream activities on Yarlung Tsangpo. Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister, Pema Khandu recently stated, “the Siang project was being planned by the Centre not just for generating electricity but to maintain the natural flow of the river all the year round and mitigate risks of flooding if China released excess water.” Local communities protested and mobilized against the government’s rhetoric of green ‘developmentalism.’ The tribes in Arunachal are concerned about privatization efforts to tame the Siang.
Commodification of rivers and marginal communities
The risks and uncertainties of marginal riverine communities are closely associated with projected waterscape enclosures. Building mega infrastructures in the riverine landscapes have serious consequences on local livelihoods and common goods. Riverine landscapes in the Ganga–Brahmaputra–Megha river basin, are uniquely characterized by formation of low-lying landforms called Chars (river islands) formed by sediments and are vulnerable to floods. Agency of riverine communities is based on locally grounded understandings of the surrounding nature on which these communities are heavily dependent upon.
Image 1: Site of the Subansiri Dam, Gerukamukh (Picture courtesy Dr Bhasker Pegu, March 2025)
Local communities led by All Adi Welfare Society, Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum and Banggo Students’ Union, staged protests against the pre-feasibility surveys of Siang hydropower project, conducted by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) in December 2022. The protesters raised voices against the mega project that would impact their ancestral farmlands, livestock, properties and surrounding environment. The Lower Subansiri Dam was constructed amidst protests. “Voices of different stakeholders” shaped pro-dam or anti-dam frames with concerns on design, environmental and cultural implications and displacement. The dam is yet to operationalize.
Image 2: Google earth image of Panyor Lower Hydro Power Station
The Ranganadi dam or Panyor Lower Hydro Power station inundates hundreds of downstream villages every year in North Lakhimpur district of Assam, bordered by Arunachal Pradesh on the northern side. Ranganadi river, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, causes devastating floods during the monsoons affecting the livelihood of thousands of people annually. The problem gets exacerbated due to lack of disaster preparedness, early warning systems, and coordinated water management between the two stakeholder states (Assam and Arunachal Pradesh). Local communities, however, integrate local knowledge systems with diverse forms of adaptability and resilience to survive the conditions of catastrophic floods caused by ‘North Eastern Electric Power Corporation (NEEPCO)’s Ranganadi dam’ as downstream people call it.
Hydropower is a key source of clean energy. However, there are issues of liability as developers echo the voices of central and state executives. Choices and preferences of these actors get transformed into public policies, while people’s voices are kept in the margins.
The rhetoric of ‘water bombs,’ ‘water wars’ and ‘weapons in guise’
China’s expansive South-to-North water diversion infrastructure are 21st century engineering feats. Although the construction began in 2002, the plans for diversion can be traced back to Mao’s period since 1949. Diversion project extracts water from Yangtze, its tributaries and the Yellow River to meet China’s regional water gaps. With growing water shortages and ever-growing need, state policies to harness the hydro reserves of the Tibetan plateau by creating a network of canals and constructing dams feeding on trans-border rivers: Yarlung Tsangpo, Salween and Mekong, is therefore inexorable. Nevertheless, phrasing China’s Great Bend activities as the ‘weapons in guise’ or within the frame of ‘water wars’ are ambiguous.
For India, taming rivers in the strategic Northeast region, sharing disputed land boundaries with China, by building big dams, are the hallmark of India’s nation-building concerns and a response to ‘China’s expansionism.’ The rhetoric of China’s dams as the ‘water bombs’ on the upper reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo would however be rickety, unless supported by sound technical assessments. The ‘geostrategic subtexts’ of hydropower projects shape strategic behaviour of the two rising global powers, behind continuous disputes over territorial claims. While China modernized its dual use military infrastructure in its borders, India shelved its projects aside due to difficult terrain, lack of resources and land acquisition. India’s civilian and military border infrastructure build-up at a faster pace and completion of frontier highways under-construction along the 1126 kms of the border in Arunachal Pradesh that India shares with China, is perhaps the pressing priority in the eastern frontiers.
Pahi Saikia is a Professor of Political Science at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati.
This special publication series is an outcome of an International Seminar under the theme “Ensuring Water Security, Ecological Integrity, and Disaster Resilience in the Sub-Himalayan Region: The Case of the Brahmaputra” that was organised by Asian Confluence in Guwahati on 8 April, 2025.
Disclaimer: The views expressed above and the information available, including photos and maps, are those of the author/s and can therefore in no way be taken to reflect the position of Asian Confluence
Sign in
New User
Register Now