Will China’s Dam in Tibet Devastate Eastern India? 

© N J Thakuria

It’s a matter of serious concern for every Indian, particularly those settling in the eastern part of India, as they are living under a ‘water bomb’ with the controlling authority to a foreign nation ruled by a Communist regime, which has no credible bilateral relation with the largest democracy on the globe. The recent earthquake that hit the Tibetan plateau killing over 125 residents and injuring several others has only precipitated the anxiety as the particular land continues to be occupied by the Communist Party run China. The immediate fear remains, if a high intensity tremor hits the China-made massive hydropower project on Yarlung Zangbo (or Tsangpo, which becomes Brahmaputra in the downstream covering northeast India and Bangladesh someday and it collapses, a trail of devastation will grip the entire Brahmaputra river basin comprising eastern Bharat localities along with the north Bangladesh.

Often called as the third pole of Earth, the Tibetan plateau faced a powerful earthquake and aftershocks on 7 January 2025, where tremor was also felt in neighbouring Nepal, Bhutan and India’s eastern localities. The quake with the intensity of 7.1 (in Richter’s magnitude scale) in the region maintaining an average elevation of over  4000 metre also destroyed more than 3,500 houses in the thinly populated high altitude Himalayan areas. Over 400 people were rescued and nearly 30,000 people have been relocated after the tremor, where the epicentre is located which is around 80 kilo metres away from the base of Mount Everest. The internet service is heavily restricted in Tibet, the actual picture may surface later with horrifying findings. Within a week, two other aftershocks (with the magnitude of 4.9 and 5) hit the same area in the Third Pole on Earth.

As the Communist government in Beijing is going to construct a large dam on the upstream of Brahmaputra, which may be the world’s largest hydropower project and hardly 22 km away from Arunachal Pradesh border, New Delhi must pursue the matter with serious concern. As usual the Chinese officials continue arguing that the USD 137 billion hydro project with the capacity of annual 300 billion kilowatt-hours electricity generation in Shigatse region of Tibet will not have a major impact on the downstream areas. All Assam Engineer’s Association (AAEA), a forum of graduate engineers, argues that a major earthquake with the epicentre near to the project may wreak havoc in lower riparian places covering the eastern localities of Bharat. So the AAEA urged the Union government in New Delhi to strongly deal with the Beijing administration for safeguarding the entire region.

Earlier, both the chief ministers of Arunachal and Assam expressed their concern over the Tibetan dam and urged the centre to address the issue with Beijing. Arunachal CM Pema Khandu recently conveyed his anxiety to New Delhi, where Assam government Chief Himanta Biswa Sarma asserted that the large dam may damage the entire ecosystem of the rivers in the lower riparian region. Sarma apprehended that if the dam is wrongly handled, the fertile region in eastern India will have to face serious consequences and solely depend on the rainwater fall in Bhutan and Arunachal.

Now India is also building a dam on Brahmaputra in Arunachal as a precautionary measure to the ill-effect of the Tibetan dam in case Beijing releases excessive water all of a sudden. So the upper Siang multipurpose project is not planned only for generating electricity (optimum capacity of 11,000 megawatt) but also maintaining the natural flow of water around the year and mitigating the risk of sudden floods. But unfortunately the local population and human rights groups have expressed resentment against the Siang project alleging that it would destroy the fragile ecosystem of the region and displace thousands of indigenous families.