Generating power: debates on development around the Nepalese Arun-3 hydropower project

Abstract

Contested since 1990, the Arun-3 dam in Nepal has so far generated more heat than hydropower involving a host of complex negotiations between its advocates and critics on the local, national and transnational levels. Cancelled after a complaint before the World Bank Inspection Panel in 1995, work is soon to be resumed. An Indian public sector company interested in exporting the electricity to India will finance it. This paper focuses on how local communities have experienced the decade-long uncertainties concerning the project and the approach road to be built. Their hopes of access to markets, electrification and a modern lifestyle will be explored in the context of an understanding of development as a desiring machine and governmentality studies. I will argue for a parallel application of the two approaches to conceptualize the entanglement of desires for development and a deep sense of local powerlessness vis-a-vis external actors.

Keywords:

• Nepal
• hydropower
• development
• governmentality
• desire

Acknowledgements

I thank Barbara Harriss-White, Shalini Randeria, Carlo Caduff, Julia Hornberger and Anna Ellmer as well as three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments on different drafts of this paper. Furthermore, I owe a great debt of gratitude to Chun Bahadur Yamphu Rai and Sarbani Kattel for their support in Nepal.

Notes

1. All first names of laypersons have been changed, leaving their caste affiliations intact. The Yamphu Rai mostly use the last name Rai, although some younger ethnic activists recently changed their names into Yamphu.

2. While using the original design of the World Bank project, SJVN is determined to increase the installed capacity from 402 to 900 MW, apparently planning to use the plant mainly to cope with peak-current conditions. That intention will not fit with the Nepalese requirements, as the main problem is a lack in base load.

3. The exact number of groups and languages is open to debate, both academically (cf. Hansson 1991) and among Rai themselves. Gaenszle (2000, 3) speaks of at least 50 distinct dialects and languages.

4. When it comes to language skills as such, Yamphu (2010, 4), on the other hand, argues that the number of fluent speakers has actually reached a critical level, seeing the language on the verge of extinction. In Hedangna, I observed a strong tendency for the use of Nepali, especially among people below the age of 40, but first language acquisition to be still largely in Yamphu.