On a football field ringed by misty mountains, the air rang with fiery speeches as tribesmen protested a planned mega-dam—India's latest move in its contest with China over Himalayan water.
India says the proposed new structure could counteract rival China's building of a likely record-breaking dam upstream in Tibet by stockpiling water and guarding against releases of weaponized torrents.
But for those at one of the possible sites for what would be India's largest dam, the project feels like a death sentence.
"We will fight till the end of time," said Tapir Jamoh, a resident of the thatch-hut village of Riew, raising a bow loaded with a poison-tipped arrow in a gesture of defiance against authorities. "We will not let a dam be built."
Jamoh's homelands of the Adi people are in the far-flung northeastern corner of India, divided from Tibet and Myanmar by soaring snowy peaks.
Proposed blueprints show India considering the site in Arunachal Pradesh for a massive storage reservoir, equal to four million Olympic-size swimming pools, behind a 280-meter (918-foot) high dam.
The project comes as China presses ahead with the $167 billion Yaxia project upstream of Riew on the river known in India as the Siang, and in Tibet as the Yarlung Tsangpo.
China's plan includes five hydropower stations, that could produce three times more electricity than its vast Three Gorges Dam—the world's largest power station—though other details remain scant.
India says the proposed new mega-dam could counteract rival China's building of a likely record-breaking dam upstream in Tibet by stockpiling water and guarding against releases of weaponised torrents.
For those at one of the possible sites for the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) what would be India's largest dam, the project feels like a death sentence.
The Siang river on which the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP), a proposed hydroelectric mega-dam project, is planned in the northeastern state of Arunachal Pradesh, India.