The northeast is a ticking time bomb of disaster: Expert

GUWAHATI: In Arunachal Pradesh's Tawang district, 10,000 feet above sea level, Buddhist lama Lobsang Gyatso, who has been leading the anti-dam protest in Tawang, has been glued to the television since the day disaster struck Uttarakhand. Gyatso is visibly disturbed by the unfolding scenes in the high-altitude Himalayan state. The reason: At least 13 large and small dams are planned in Tawang, a biodiversity hotspot located barely 30km from the Line of Actual Control with China.

"Dams and large-scale developmental activities have devastated Uttarakhand. I am very worried because we'll be heading in the same direction if we allow dams in a geologically and ecologically fragile place like Tawang," Gyatso explained.

The enormity of the recent rain and floods disaster in Uttarakhand has provided northeast anti-dam activists grounds to pitch their demand for stopping all large dams to avoid similar devastating natural calamities in the region. Activists and experts here expressed fear that an Uttarkhand-like disaster is already in the making in the NE with over 100 large dams planned here. They said that the scale of the disaster has increased manifold in Uttarakand because of human-induced factors.

The NE has been experiencing flash floods and landslides every monsoon and experts are worried that climate change and progressive ecological disturbances due to large-scale dam construction would only aggravate the hazards in future.

"Geologically and seismologically, the region is a time bomb of disaster. It's continuously ticking. Through large-scale dam construction and developmental activities, we are only accelerating the bomb, pushing the region towards an Uttarakhand-like disaster," said Partha J Das, head of water, climate and hazard (WATCH) programme of Aaranyak (a biodiversity conservation NGO).

Das said that the landslide-induced dam outburst flood (LDOF) in Arunachal Pradesh's Siang district, also bordering China's Tibet region, was 10 times more powerful than the Uttarakhand floods. The Siang flash floods affected five adjoining districts leaving 30 persons dead, 100 people missing and over 50,000 people rendered homeless. The flash floods were triggered by the breach in a dam on the Yigongzangbu river — a tributary of the Yarlung Zhangbo, the upper stream of the Brahmaputra — caused by mud from a massive landslide, he added.

Similarly, 100 people were killed in Assam's Goalpara district due to flash floods that originated in Meghalaya in 2004. "The Arunachal Pradesh, Assam and Meghalaya landscapes are prone of disasters like landslides and flash floods. Recession of glaciers in the Himalayas caused by climate change and disturbances caused by construction activities has made the hazards more catastrophic," Das summed up.

Last year, floods claimed 124 lives in Assam and affected over 23 lakh people as the state received 30 per cent excess rainfall in June alone. The excess rainfall last year was in sharp contrast to the drought-like situations the state experienced in 2006 and 2009. In 2011, too, Assam experienced less rainfall, but flash floods wreaked havoc in Dhemaji district of the state.

Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS) president Akhil Gogoi, who has been on the forefront of the anti-dam stir in Assam, said: "Big dams on the Ganga's tributaries, large-scale stone quarrying and timber-felling had a large role to play in the Uttarakhand disaster. It should be an eye-opener for proponents of large dams in the northeast. We reaffirm our stand against large dams. We demand the entire NE be declared an ecological zone and large dam construction be stopped forthwith."