New Delhi: India is all set to build an 11,000 MW hydropower project on the Siang River in Arunachal’s Upper Siang district. This decision of Government of India has given China sleepless nights that claims the northeast state as part of its territory.
According to euraseantimes.com, India’s move comes in response to China’s plan to build the world’s largest hydropower project—the 60,000 MW Motuo mega-dam—on the Yarlung Tsangpo River in Tibet.
The Chinese plan is prompting downstream India to take measures against its potential use as a hydrological weapon, given China’s well-known record for doing so.
Its design includes a “buffer storage” of over 9 billion cubic metres of water during peak monsoons. This would act as a reserve when water flow is reduced. It will also act as a buffer for downstream areas of Arunachal and Assam if China releases sudden water.
New Delhi is stated to be worried that the dam will give Beijing the power to control the river flow, which provides drinking water to an estimated 1.8 billion people in countries including China, India, Bhutan, and Bangladesh.
The mega dam will add to the series of other dams China has built to tame the Yarlung Tsangpo, which is known as the Brahmaputra river in India. This “Mother of all Dams” will curtail the river’s flow during the lean season and trigger artificial floods during the rainy season.
China has a history of using its dams to carry out transnational aggression. The piece noted that in 2021, China cut the water flow of the Mekong River by 50% for three weeks without any prior warning. The flow was cut ostensibly for power-line maintenance, but this affected the millions of people living along the waterways in the Southeast Asian countries of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam.
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