Probably for decades, the people living in eastern India have been talking about the hydro-electrical dams in upper riparian Tibet (now under occupation of China since 1951) which has the potential to devastate the entire region following a man-made error or natural disasters precisely a high intensity earthquake. For the millions of Brahmaputra river basin dwellers, the dams in south-eastern Tibet may pose as a ‘water bomb’ with the controlling authority to a visibly unfriendly Communist regime, with no pragmatic bilateral relation with the largest democracy on the globe. The recent earthquakes that hit the Tibetan plateau for many times only precipitated the anxiety among the populace living on both the banks of mighty Brahmaputra, which originates in Mansarovar lake in the Himalayan region and culminates in the Bay of Bengal.
The Communist administration in Beijing lately approved the construction of a gigantic hydropower project in the lower reaches of Yarlung Zangbo (Tsangpo) river in eastern Tibet, which is hardly 22 kilometre from Indian bordering State of Arunachal Pradesh, to add the list of multiple hydropower stations along the river that flows from west to east till it enters India. Projected to be the world’s largest river dam with budgetary allocation of USD 137 billion, the colossal venture is estimated to produce 300 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year. Beijing thus campaigns for clean energy production to achieve China’s carbon neutrality goals with a large number of hydro-projects ignoring various environment-related implications in downstream localities of India and Bangladesh.
The issue came alive as the Tibetan plateau experienced a powerful earthquake on 7 January 2025 with the magnitude of 7.1 on Richter’s scale that killed at least 126 residents and injured over 335 others. The tremor in Shigatse region of Tibet also resulted in collapsing over 3,500 houses with an immediate effect on over 61,500 people. The quake in the high altitude region (than maintains an average elevation of 4000 metre) was also felt in neighbouring Nepal, Bhutan and India’s eastern localities. As the internet service is heavily restricted in Tibet, the actual picture may surface later with horrifying findings. Within a week, two other aftershocks (with the magnitude of 4.9 and 5) hit the same area in the Third Pole on Earth.
The highest Tibetan spiritual leader, 14th Dalai Lama, who stays at the hilly Dharamsala town in north India, expressed profound grief over the loss of human beings in the natural disaster and prayed for their solace. Now civil society groups in northeast India express serious concern over the apprehension of such a high intensity tremor hitting the super dam on Tsangpo in the coming days. All Assam Engineer’s Association (AAEA), a forum of graduate engineers, argues that a major earthquake with the epicentre near to the project will wreak havoc in eastern localities of Bharat and northern Bangladesh.
“Tibetan glaciers, spreading over a hundred thousand square kilometre area, support nearly 1200 cubic km of ice and it nurtures four largest rivers namely Tsangpo (Brahmaputra), Dri-Chu, Mekong and Huang Ho. So most of the south and southeast Asian countries depend on Tibet for fresh water. There is a high probably that Beijing can use the dam to inundate theses countries in rainy-summer season prompting environmental, economic & social consequences and also stop the flow of water during dry-winter period in case of any political confrontations,” observed the AAEA adding that New Delhi should strongly pursue with Beijing for safeguarding the entire region.
Earlier, both the chief ministers of Arunachal and Assam expressed their concern over the Tibetan dam and also urged the centre to address the issue with Beijing. Arunachal CM Pema Khandu recently conveyed his anxiety to New Delhi, where Assam government chief Himanta Biswa Sarma asserted that the large dam may damage the entire ecosystem of the rivers in the lower riparian region. Sarma apprehended that if the dam is wrongly handled, the fertile region in eastern India will have to face serious consequences and solely depend on the rainwater fall in Bhutan and Arunachal.