Abstract ID: 3.11948 | Accepted as Talk | Talk/Oral | TBA | TBA

A massive proliferation of large dams for hydropower development is underway across the Himalayan regions of India. Promoted by the Government of India (GoI) as a panacea for India’s economic development amidst decades long anti-dam contestations, hydropower development has now found a new thrust as key strategy to India’s transition towards renewables, exacerbating large hydropower dams especially in the mountainous Northeastern states of India. Unlike the multi-purpose dams across India, large dams in the Himalayan headwaters are developed as single purpose, cascade Run-of-River (RoR) dams exclusively for hydropower or electricity generation that are evacuated from hydropower generating mountain states to power-deficit states of India. While “power for all” initiative of the GoI for securing energy security of India is essential and also complement “access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all” — one of the seventeen globally adopted Sustainable Development Goals, the development of gigantic water infrastructure that sprawls across both water and land has affected human and non-human environment not only where such infrastructure is constructed but all along the river’s course. Noting that the pros and cons of water-infrastructure development in the mountain regions, including its efficiency and sustainability in delivering water-based energy transition and security, remain contested and open to debate, the paper discusses large hydropower dam development on River Teesta in Sikkim, and its impact on the local communities. The main argument of the paper is that large dams promoted as necessary development interventions for achieving long-term energy security for urban regions, energy transition for India, and as key to achieving SDGs to usher in holistic economic development of the country are discernibly inequitable, unjust and non-inclusive. This raises questions about the equity, justice and sustainability of such infrastructural development projects, exposing its misalignment with the very principle of sustainable development and even clashes between SDGs.