The district of Tawang in Arunachal Pradesh is situated in the north-western part of the state. Standing at an elevation of 2,669 metres above sea level and covering an area of 2,085 square kilometres, the valleys of Tawang are mesmerisingly beautiful. Blue skies, gleaming lakes, rushing waterfalls — it’s picture perfect, but the state government isn’t interested in the snapshots that you could take in Tawang. In its natural beauty, the State sees the potential for something different: development through hydel power projects (HPP).

The government opened the hydropower sector to private companies in 2003 and Arunachal Pradesh offered almost 60,000 MW of projects to the private sector. Out of the 148 Memorandum of Understandings signed by the state government in Arunachal Pradesh till 2011, 15 mega hydropower projects are in Tawang. The biggest of these 15 are the Nyamjang Chhu Power Project, Tawang I and Tawang II — all in Tawang.

However, the HPP don’t have the support of the locals because to them, the dams that will be built in the process will strike what they hold most sacred. Tawang is home to 50,000 people, most of whom are Monpa Buddhists. The community sees itself as the protector of the forests and no animals are allowed to be killed in the region, a crime for which a culprit has to face imprisonment. Not just animals, even trees and stones are revered here. As far as the Monpa are concerned, the state government’s hydropower ambitions are a disaster and rather than passively watch it unfold, the Monpa have decided to take a stand.

According to Nyamjang Chhu Power project’s site, the HPP got all clearances – Techno Economic (TEC), Principle Forest and Final Environment clearance – by April 19, 2012. Within a month, by May 16, Monpa Buddhists, under Save Mon Region Foundation organization (SMRF), were out on the roads, protesting against the dam. They demanded a moratorium on the project from the then Union power minister, Sushil Kumar Shinde.

Four years later, their struggle continues and the threats posed by HPP to Tawang’s nature and local way of life are no less menacing.

According to Lobsang Gyatso, General Secretary, SMRF, the HPP threaten the very existence of the Monpa. “We only have this land to cultivate for survival,” said Gyatso. “They want to acquire the land around the river for the dam, but we can’t afford to give that away. We’ve already given away a lot to the defence and district administration. Anymore and our survival will be in danger.”

Gyatso has a point. The largely agricultural Monpa community has already parted with much of their land for the construction of the 28 other power projects in the district.

“We cultivate wheat, rice, vegetables etc. ourselves and sell it in the local market which gives us money to buy stuff like oil, sugar and cloths,” said Tsering Dorjey, a member of SMRF. “If our land is given for the dams then our means of livelihood will go with it.”

It’s not just the living Monpa that the HPP threaten. Even the dead are affected.

A funeral rite of Monpa monks involves cutting up the deceased’s body into 108 parts and feeding these to the fish in the river Tang Chu, an act that symbolises the cyclical nature of life and emphasises how all living things are connected. One of the HPP proposes the Tawang be built exactly on this river. “The dam will make the river dry. If it is built on Tang Chu, we’ll not have a place to carry out the death ceremony for our dead,” Dorjey said.

Add to this a deep-seated mistrust of the administration, and you get a deadlock in Tawang. Back in 2011, the state government allegedly made some Monpas sign bonds that stated they would not carry out any campaigns against the HPP. If they refused or violated this, they’d be imprisoned. However, awareness has spread — primarily because the existing projects are in states of disarray. “The energy requirement of our region is just 7 MW. However we are just given 2.5 MW,” Dorjey said. “How can we trust the authorities on the new projects when they haven’t been able to prove their efficiency with the earlier ones?”

“Tawang has 28 mini and micro hydropower projects already constructed, but many are either malfunctioning or only on paper,” said Gyatso. If these existing projects are made to function properly, not only will the demands of the region be met, there will even be surplus electricity too. This was more or less what Prime Minister Narendra Modi too had suggested when in the run-up to the 2014 general elections, he’d talked about developing small hydro power projects instead of mega projects in the region. Since becoming Prime Minister, however, he seems to have forgotten that promise.

“Bharatiya Janata Party or Congress, they both have the same line of argument, dams have to be built,” said journalist Tongam Rina. “Before elections Narendra Modi said that the focus will be on mini and micro dams, just what people wanted. But he recently announced in his speech here in February this year that even the mega HPPs will be constructed.” She pointed out that even the latest National Green Tribunal order suspending the environmental clearance of the Nyamjang Chhu Power project hasn’t scrapped the project completely.

Unsurprisingly, many projects are yet to get environmental clearances. Some like Khangteng HEP (7.5 MW) and Shyaro HEP (3.0 MW) are being carried on illegally, as detailed by a site visit report conducted by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. In case of Nyamjang Chhu, the ministry’s go-ahead was suspended a couple of months ago, by the National Green Tribunal’s order of April 7.

Tawang is a Himalayan Biodiversity hotspot and the proposed power projects will cut into 249 hectares of forest land. Aside from the local flora and fauna that would be impacted, the region falls under seismic zone 5 and is prone to soil erosion and landslide. The impact of carrying out these power projects could be devastating. Last year, a report was released that laid out how disastrous an impact HPP would have on the region. The existing projects have already run into trouble and private companies, finding the whole process too troublesome, want the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) to step in and take charge.

Development is a tangled knot of regulation, mismanagement, corruption and suspicion in Tawang. Nature and religion are intimately intertwined here and to dismiss the importance of the environment and Buddhism in people’s lives — while offering some half-baked promises of modernism in exchange — is ill-conceived. Historically, this region entered India’s borders only in 1914 and was governed until then by local monks. The monks’ influence continues to resound deeply in Tawang. After all, the largest Buddhist monastery in India and the second largest in the world — the Tawang Monastery — is here. Zemithang valley in Tawang is where a rare species of black-necked crane makes its home in winter and the Monpas believe the crane is an embodiment of the sixth Dalai Lama who was born in Tawang. The dams and projects that have been planned in the region would threaten all this — pilgrimage spots would disappear, the crane would be threatened, rivers would dry up.

Led by the Monpa monks, locals say these costs are far too high for whatever benefit the HPP may provide. Considering how little Tawang is being offered in exchange and how carelessly its natural riches are being carved up, the monks may well be right.