The Politics of Place and the Place of Politics. Large hydropower dam contestations in Sikkim, India

Summary

Hydropower development in India is highly contested and controversial, though often framed as bringing prosperity and wealth. India’s water abundant states across the Eastern and Western Himalaya experienced a bludgeoning of large dam development after 1991-92. Dam constructions in the Himalayan regions of India are solely for electricity generation to be transferred to deficit states across India. My study investigates the politics of place and the place of politics arising out of the conundrum of variegated local responses to government-driven large hydropower development in the Eastern Himalayan region of Sikkim. Through qualitative, multi-sited ethnographic research, the thesis examines local responses to dams ranging from a persistently strong opposition to a perceived willingness to negotiate with the government and complete silence by individuals and communities in North Sikkim. It shows how spatial contradiction invoked by large dams resulted in unique place-based struggles for identity and power that (re)shape territories, protest movements and contestations.