English
India-China relations: China has reportedly approved the construction of the world’s largest dam on the Brahmaputra River in Tibet close to the Indian border, raising concerns in riparian states – India and Bangladesh. The gargantuan undertaking is slated to be the biggest infrastructure project on the planet, costing a whopping $137 billion, as per reports.
According to reports, the proposed dam will dwarf the Three Gorges Dam — currently the largest dam in the world– both in capacity as well as magnitude, and will be capable of produce nearly 70 million kilowatts of energy annually, that is more than three times the installed capacity of 22.5 million kilowatts of the Three Gorges Dams.
As per an official statement by the Chinese government, the construction of the hydropower project has been approved in the lower reaches of the Yarlung Zangbo River, the Tibetan name for the Brahmaputra, Xinhua reported. The dam is to be built at a huge gorge in the Himalayan reaches where the Brahmaputra river makes a giant U-turn to flow into Arunachal Pradesh and then to Bangladesh, according to a PTI report.
The proposed project has massive hydropower potential but also presents unique engineering challenges as a section of the Yarlung Zangbo River rises 2,000 metres (6,561 ft) in elevation over a short 50 km (31 miles) stretch.
Experts speculate that the dam could cost over one trillion yuan ($137 billion), dwarfing any other single infrastructure project on the planet including China’s own Three Gorges Dam, currently the world’s largest dam, which was built at a cost of 254.2 billion yuan ($34.83 billion), that included the resettlement of 1.4 million displaced people.
The Three Gorges Dam’s final investment cost over four times than the initial estimate of 57 billion yuan.
Meanwhile, the announcement of the dam’s construction has raised concerns in India and neighbouring Bangladesh, as the Brahmaputra River flows in both nations. New Delhi fears that the dam, besides giving China the power to control the water flow, will also enable Beijing to flood border areas in times of hostilities, due to the sheer size and scale of the gigantic infrastructure.
In 2006, India and China established the Expert Level Mechanism (ELM) to discuss various issues related to trans-border rivers under which China provides India with hydrological information on the Brahmaputra river and Sutlej river during the flood seasons.
Recently, Data sharing of trans-border rivers figured in the talks between India, China Special Representatives (SRs) for border question, NSA Ajit Doval and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, held in Beijing on December 18. The SRs “provided positive directions for cross-border cooperation and exchanges” including data sharing on trans-border rivers, a statement by the Ministry of External Affairs said.
Notably, India is also building a dam over the Brahmaputra in Arunachal Pradesh.
(With PTI inputs)
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