Lost in Stages

Editorial:
Hydel projects, whether the euphemistically tagged “run of the river” variant or the mega dam undertakings, are not pretty sights when they are works in progress. The army of workers labouring in the river-bed, the cavernous “adit tunnels” and the attendant blasting works, the filth of labour camps which hydel developers conveniently forget to provide with even the most basic of amenities and the condescending attitude with which people’s complaints and worries are handled, all these collaborate with the visible ruining of the affected area to scare people away from hydel projects.
Hydel, however, is presented as clean energy. This, because once the project is commissioned, nature is allowed to reclaim itself in the affected area and generation of new megawatts comes at no additional burden on the environment. No other conventional source of energy generates power without putting the environment under additional stress. It is this aspect of hydel generation that makes it “clean”, and it is for this reason that hydel project developers need to be exceptionally meticulous in their preparation to ensure that this advantage is not lost to negligent planning. A national corporation created exclusively to “develop” hydroelectric power is expected to have refined the science of minimising damage and ensuring effective mitigation and professional commissioning of hydel projects. NHPC, however, comes up short. That Stage-V would come at a high cost was expected, it was after all the largest hydel project in Sikkim when work on it began, and was coming up in an area which had remained largely untouched by development. The perception of damage would have been amplified in this area, but reality is that even after commissioning, the project continues to damage and destroy. Development comes at a cost, even people in remote Dzongu will grant as much, but what has obviously offended people enough to make them stay away from even the public hearing called for Stage-IV, is the attitude with which NHPC has developed Stage-V and the tokenism with which the concerned authorities have held them to account. People are willing to risk danger if they can be reassured that everything is being done to mitigate it and that in the event that something does goes wrong, they will receive spontaneous and genuine assistance. It’s not happened with Stage-V.
But it should have. In fact, Stage-V had begun with the potential to become the model for hydel project development. Its announcement was received with people’s protests flagging the environment and socio-cultural impact of such a big project. The Government listened to the protests, negotiated and agreed upon a wide range of conditions which the project-developer would have to meet. In a first of its kind development for such projects in the country, the State Government convinced NHPC to ink an MoU enumerating the various conditions it would meet and the responsibility with which it would develop the project. This was also the project in which the people managed to get the land acquisition rates revised. Unfortunately, as work on the project began, everyone concerned lost the page and the cost of this lack of involvement litters the drive from Singtam to Dikchu. This would not have been the case if the MoU had been shored up with an effective, not token, monitoring committee. A short-sighted outlook convinced the concerned authorities to ignore implementation of the MoU as they moved from one complaint to the other, mediating resolutions, allowing NHPC to get away with just feigning concern but never getting held accountable. Where people wanted quality protective works, NHPC sought to get away by holding eye-camps. Stage-V is fait accompli now, but its experience has been sour for the affected people and this has been noticed by everyone, especially those who will be affected by NHPC’s move upstream with Stage-IV. A majority of these people have decided to stay away from the public hearing. One will learn on Friday what this means for the process, but it would have been advisable for the concerned agencies to have convinced the affected people that not only will they be allowed to speak, but that they would also be heard at the public hearing. A boycott is obviously not the solution to the hurt people carry with regard to hydel projects, but people will participate only if they are convinced that their participation will fetch them a better commissioned project. Matters, of course, would not have come to such a pass if Stage-V had lived up to its promise. Instead, it is being held up as the reason making the people apprehensive about Stage-IV.