-The Hindu By planning hydropower projects, India and China are placing the region at great risk In an article published on the website of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League, China announced that it is planning to build a major hydropower project as a part of its 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25), on the Yarlung Zangbo River, in Mêdog County in Tibet. The hydropower generation station is expected to provide 300...

-Scroll.in The electricity tariff would be more than double the average cost in India, an RTI query has revealed. On December 3, the Supreme Court dismissed a petition filed by a Guwahati-based civil society group challenging an order passed by the National Green Tribunal order in July. The tribunal had cleared the decks for the resumption of construction of the contentious Lower Subansiri dam along the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. The Supreme Court’s endorsement...

-The Hindu The growth-at-all-cost mantra has left a vast majority of people impoverished. If the first year of the BJP government is any indication, its five-year stint may turn out to be the worst period for India’s environment and ecosystem-dependent people since the 1980s. This is saying a lot, given that none of the previous governments has been particularly sensitive to issues of fresh air and water, productive soil, healthy forests and grasslands....

In September 2010, a large public meeting was held in Guwahati to discuss the impact of large hydroelectric projects in the Northeast. In attendance was Jairam Ramesh, then the minister of environment and forests in the government of India. Ramesh heard that the people of Assam were worried that the hundred and more dams being planned in Arunachal Pradesh would reduce water-flows, increase the chance of floods, and deplete fish...

For local residents, most Himalayan peaks from Sikkim to Arunachal Pradesh are divine — their might flowing in the form of rivers capable of sustaining life and washing away their ills. One such river is Lohit in Arunachal Pradesh, where Parashuram, an incarnation of Vishnu, was believed to have cleansed himself after beheading his mother. Today, however, the Himalayas seem to be fighting a losing battle against India's hunger for electricity....