ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a contextual understanding of hydropower projects in this mountainous terrain. Hydropower project is justified in this abundantly resourceful terrain as part of India's long-term commitment to cleaner sources of energy. This, interestingly at the local level, is ‘refracted through the vested interests’ of market players supported by the patronages of political leaders and bargains with the community institutions at different levels. This manifold engagement is producing ‘environmental injustice’ in Arunachal Pradesh, and the state has emerged as a critical site of resistance on the ground of the claims over natural resources and choice of ecological governance mechanisms. Thus, within a broader notion of justice, a new politics of grassroots contestations is proliferated with regional and local identities, rights over natural resources and the ecological ethics of communities. Hydropower project in this case becomes ‘context-specific for such multi-scale understanding of neoliberal development on the ground’ and its implications on ecological substance.
