The proposed 11,200 MW Siang Upper Multipurpose Project is being opposed in Geku not only because villagers fear the loss of homes and farmland, but because the project could disrupt a river system that structures Adi life. For communities along the Siang in Arunachal Pradesh, the river is a seasonal guide, a sacred presence, a source of customary authority and part of traditional healing practices.
That wider meaning changes the terms of the infrastructure debate. A dam is usually assessed through power generation, land acquisition, construction costs and physical displacement. The account from Geku, described as the epicentre of the anti-dam movement, points to another category of impact: the disruption of an inherited relationship between a community and the landscape that sustains its social institutions.
The Siang flows from Tibet, where it is known as the Yarlung Tsangpo, and has shaped settlements along its banks. For the Adi people, one of the six tribes of the Abotani clan, its role extends beyond irrigation or transport. The river’s changing colour, water levels, fog and currents are read as signals that help residents understand the seasons and plan agricultural and everyday activities.
Opek Taku, a 60-year-old public figure in Geku, told the Times of India that the river has helped generations of farmers decide when to cultivate, harvest or travel into the hills. He said that when the water turns sky blue, residents understand that the paddy harvesting season has arrived. Morning fog above the river is read as a sign that the day is likely to be sunny, while changes in water levels are understood as an indication that heavy rain may arrive across the region.
These observations are not presented by villagers as formal meteorological measurements. They are intergenerational knowledge developed through repeated contact with a local environment. Taku described them as practical observations that help people decide when it is safe to enter fields or travel towards the hills before rainfall. In this sense, the river functions as an informal environmental information system embedded in community life.
The proposed project has therefore raised concerns that are different from the standard question of whether affected families will receive compensation. If the river’s flow, appearance or seasonal behaviour changes, the effect could extend to knowledge that is not easily replaceable through financial payment or relocation. The source report does not establish the project’s final land-acquisition footprint, construction schedule or the precise hydrological changes it would create. It does, however, show why residents perceive the risk as extending beyond the loss of individual plots.
The cultural role of the Siang is equally important. Taku said water from the river is traditionally stored in bottles inside homes to ward off evil spirits and protect against fire. The practice is linked to an earlier housing system in which roofs were made from tokou leaves gathered from forests, leaving homes particularly vulnerable to fire. The river, in this account, is part of a chain connecting forest materials, housing practices, household safety and spiritual belief.
Toya Ejing, a youth leader from Geku, compared the sacred status of Siang water for the Adi people with the importance of the Ganga to Hindus. The comparison indicates that the river is not treated simply as a natural resource. It is understood as a living source of protection and continuity, and its value is expressed through practices carried out within homes and community institutions.
Ejing also described a customary justice practice in which Siang water is used in an ordeal intended to establish whether a person is guilty or innocent. According to his account, a boiled egg is placed in a bamboo tube containing hot water collected from the river. The suspect is asked to retrieve it in the presence of community members and priests. The belief is that a guilty person’s hand will be burned, while an innocent person will remove the egg unharmed.
Whether viewed as a religious practice, a customary procedure or a community belief, the account shows that the river is connected to local ideas of truth and social order. The Siang is not only located beside the village; it is incorporated into the mechanisms through which the community interprets illness, wrongdoing, protection and responsibility.
Water from the river is also associated with healing. Ejing said that water collected from the Siang is poured into a large Tibetan-made brass vessel, after which the maternal uncle of a sick person washes the patient’s body in the hope of curing a prolonged illness. The practice places the river within a family and kinship structure, rather than treating healing as an individual or purely medical activity.
This is the central institutional challenge raised by the proposed dam. Administrative assessments can identify houses, farms, roads, forests and other physical assets. They may also calculate compensation for land and structures. But the Geku account suggests that a river can simultaneously function as agricultural infrastructure, a calendar, a sacred entity, a customary authority and a healing medium. Each role depends on continuity, access and shared belief.
The report does not provide details of the project’s environmental assessment, rehabilitation plan, consultation process, financing structure or construction timetable. It also does not independently establish the extent to which the Siang’s flow would change if the project proceeds. Those gaps matter because the concerns raised by residents need to be evaluated alongside project documents, hydrological studies and legally mandated consultations.
At the same time, the absence of those details does not make the community’s concerns marginal. Infrastructure planning often divides impacts into administrative categories, while residents experience them as a connected system. A change in the river may affect farming decisions, access to the hills, household practices and community rituals at the same time. A relocation package may address physical housing without reproducing the river-based setting in which those practices have meaning.
The Siang dispute therefore brings a familiar development question into sharper focus: what counts as displacement? If displacement is defined only as the movement of people from one location to another, the loss of customary knowledge and sacred access can remain invisible. If it is understood as the interruption of social, ecological and cultural relationships, the assessment becomes considerably more complex.
For the Adi people of Geku, the river’s significance is carried through ordinary actions: reading the water before farming, storing it at home, invoking it in customary justice and using it in healing rituals. These are not isolated symbols. Together, they show how a landscape becomes an institution through repeated community use.
The evidence supplied in the report confirms the depth of the river’s role in Adi life and the fears generated by the proposed 11,200 MW project. It does not yet establish the project’s final impacts or whether the concerns have been addressed through official planning and consultation. The developments that require scrutiny are therefore the project’s technical and environmental documents, its treatment of cultural and customary practices, and the process through which Geku’s residents are consulted before any irreversible change is made to the Siang.
