Foreign funding must be probed, but it cannot brush aside local concerns over the Siang dam

CBI is probing alleged foreign funding of an Arunachal Pradesh activist, claiming that four overseas entities transferred ₹20.9 lakh to sustain protests against the Siang Upper Multipurpose and Dibang hydropower projects. Whether FCRA violations have occurred must, of course, be investigated. But to infer in all this that 'foreign money' explains opposition to a mega-dam risk obscures a more key question: why are local communities opposed to it?

Proposed in 2008-09, the 11,200 MW project has faced opposition from indigenous communities for nearly 2 decades. Their concerns go beyond displacement to the loss of ancestral land, livelihood, cultural identity and sacred sites. Estimates suggest that nearly 1.5 lakh people could be affected. Nor are fears about consequences of large hydropower projects in the Himalayas fanciful. Uttarakhand's 2021 flash floods devastated the Rishiganga hydel project and damaged the under-construction Tapovan-Vishnugad project. Nepal's devastating August floods buried a dozen hydropower plants, exposing the vulnerability of infra built pell-mell in fragile mountain valleys. These disasters do not establish that dams caused the floods. But they do show how dams can become destructive missiles when unleashed by raging floodwaters.

The Siang project also raises questions about rehabilitation, compensation, disaster preparedness and long-term security of downstream communities. These deserve transparent, credible answers, not knee-jerk conspiracy theories. A government confident of its development case should be confident of subjecting it to public scrutiny. Not every critic is an agent of a foreign hand. And even if foreign funding is found to be present, the concerns need to be answered, not eclipsed.