Arunachal Forms a High-Level Panel for the Siang Dam Survey, but Local Consent Is Still Missing

The Government's Commitment and the Villagers' Demand

The commitment: the Arunachal Cabinet says the "voices, welfare and aspirations of the likely project affected families and local communities have always been and will always remain, central to the process."

What has actually happened: an empowered high-level committee has been set up to guide and coordinate the survey, opposition has been described as "misinformation and disinformation" and school exhibitions have been held for 640 students in villages that may be affected.

The gap is specific. None of these steps asks the adults whose land may be submerged whether the dam should be built. The committee's mandate is to get the survey done. Outreach aimed at schoolchildren is awareness-building, not consultation.

Where the process breaks down is consent. The problem is not funding, technical capacity or monitoring.

The Case for the Dam Is Real It would be wrong to dismiss the project's rationale:

• Strategic: The Siang enters India from Tibet, where it is the Yarlung Tsangpo. China began building a megadam on that river in July 2025. A large Indian storage reservoir downstream could buffer sudden changes in upstream flow.
• Flood moderation: The Siang-Brahmaputra basin floods Assam year after year. Storage can reduce peak flows.
• Clean energy: 11,000 MW or more of hydropower would be a major addition of low-carbon power. That is why the Centre declared SUMP a National Project in 2008. But eighteen years later, not even the pre-feasibility survey is complete. The delay is a sign that the project has not won local acceptance.

Why Consent Matters Here in Particular

Three features make consent essential for this project, not optional:

1. The scale of submergence. A multipurpose reservoir of this size would flood river-valley land that Adi communities have farmed and held for generations. For them it is ancestral land, not just property that compensation can replace.
2. Seismic risk. This is one of the most earthquake-prone regions in the world. The 1950 Assam-Tibet earthquake, magnitude 8.6, hit the eastern Himalaya here. A large reservoir in such terrain places risks on downstream communities who have had no say in the decision.
3. Law and precedent. India's own legal practice recognises consent for tribal land. In the Niyamgiri case (2013), the Supreme Court left the decision on bauxite mining to the local gram sabhas, which rejected it. Free, prior and informed consent is part of Indian practice, not a foreign concept.

What the Committee Could Do

The committee is not necessarily a mistake. If its mandate included real consultation with affected villages and gram sabhas, independent review of seismic and submergence risks and publication of the pre-feasibility findings, it could close the gap. As currently described, it is set up to complete the survey, not to seek consent.

For the exam: The Siang dam should not be treated simply as development versus environment. The strategic case and the consent problem are both real. What UPSC examiners reward is identifying that the project has stalled because of a missing consent process, not a lack of engineering or funding and naming that clearly.