“Environmentalism of the poor”: the Tipaimukh Dam, ecological disasters and environmental resistance beyond borders

Abstract

The Indian government recently resumed the construction of the Tipaimukh Dam on the Barak River just 1 km north of Bangladesh’s north-eastern border. The construction work was stalled in March 2007 in the wake of massive protests from within and outside India. Experts have argued that the Dam, when completed, would cause colossal disasters to Bangladesh and India, with the former being vastly affected: the Dam would virtually dry up the Surma and Kushiara, two important rivers for Bangladesh. Therefore, this controversial Dam project has generated immense public discontents leading to wider mass-movements in Bangladesh, India, and around the world. The movement has taken various forms, ranging from simple protests to a submission of a petition to the United Nations. Drawing on the “environmentalism of the poor” as a conceptual metaphor, the article examines this global movement to show how environmental resistance against the Tipaimukh Dam has transcended national borders and taken on a transnational form by examining such questions as: who is protesting, why, in what ways, and with what effects. In order to elucidate the impending social and ecological impacts, which would potentially disrupt communities in South Asia, the paper offers some pragmatic policy recommendations that also seek to augment social mobility in the region.

Resettlement lies: Suggestive evidence from 29 large dam projects

“…Hence, these would be incentivized to downplay resettlement data since larger resettlement figures can result in more controversy around a dam project (Tarrow 1994;Martinez-Alier 2002) and even a withdrawal of funding with the (originally World Bank-funded) Arun III Dam in Nepal being a case in point (Rest 2012). Meanwhile, project opponents would be keen to inflate resettlement figures to attract additional media attention which would strengthen their anti-dam-campaign (Islam and Islam 2016). We base our different categories of stakeholders mostly on the categorization by Nüsser (2003).…”

Ranking of Sites for Installation of Hydropower Plant Using MLP Neural Network Trained with GA: A MADM Approach

“…Other linguistic data like social acceptance, site's distance from reserved area, existence of endangered species, availability of medicinal plants, sites within seismic zone and family displaced (hostile population) and their willingness for resettlement are studied by assigning a score as per guideline given by experts around the globe and those specified by Central Pollution Control Board, 2012 [ 15 ], and Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF) guidelines for industries and impact assessment 201 [ 16 ]. Social acceptance or Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) impact of those selected power plants are analyzed based on different literatures survey [ 10 , 17 – 19 ]. The ANN is trained by referring to the important subattributes in Table 1 .…”

Physicochemical quality assessment of the Kushiara River Water in Bangladesh

“…However, India is going with a plan to build its largest hydroelectric project, the Tipaimukh Dam Project on the river Barak, at the location where the Tipai River meets the Barak on the border of the districts Kolashib and Churachandpur of the states Mizoram and Manipur, respectively. Once the Tipaimukh Dam comes into operation (Bharatpedia, 2021), the free water flow of the river Barak river will be regulated, and this will have tremendous adverse effects on the ecosystem of the rivers Surma and Kushiara in Bangladesh (M. S. Islam & Islam, 2016). Assessment of the anticipated adversity would require reliable baseline data on the water quality of these rivers in the pre-dam periods.…”