At 72, Ninong Ering has seen rivers rise and communities drown in floodwaters more times than he can count. So when he says he supports the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, it doesn’t come across as a political statement. It sounds more like a man who’s been waiting half a century to finally say I told you so.
The Pasighat West MLA and former Union Minister stepped in front of the cameras recently and made his position crystal clear — he backs mega dams, he has always backed them, and he wants people to at least hear the project out before shutting it down.
“I am 72 years old, and I was a member of the Brahmaputra Flood Control team in the 1970s. Since then, I have been in favour of mega dams to control floods and support irrigation,” Ering said, with the kind of conviction that comes not from a party directive but from decades of watching the Brahmaputra and Siang do their worst.
The project in question — the Siang Upper Multipurpose Project, or SUMP — is planned to generate around 11,000 MW or more of power. That’s not a small number. That’s the kind of capacity that could reshape the energy landscape of the entire Northeast. But the debate around it has never really been only about electricity.
Ering pointed to India’s experience with large dams like the Bhakra Nangal and Hirakud, arguing that the country has already demonstrated it can build earthquake-resistant structures and manage the rehabilitation of displaced communities. He also highlighted the economic possibilities — tourism, local development, downstream benefits — that tend to get buried under the louder noise of opposition.
And there is legitimate noise. Ering acknowledged that the Northeast falls within a seismically active zone, which is exactly the kind of thing critics don’t let anyone forget. He didn’t wave it away. He said precautions need to be taken. He also brought up something that tends to get glossed over in domestic debates — China’s own plans for a massive hydropower project on the same river system. If the water is going to be controlled, the argument goes, shouldn’t India be the one doing the controlling?
What Ering is really asking for, though, is simpler than all of that. He urged people to allow the preliminary assessment — specifically a Pre-Feasibility Report — to proceed, so that the actual potential and implications of the project could be properly understood before anyone makes up their mind. That’s a reasonable ask. You don’t have to love a dam to agree that understanding it first makes sense.
The debate over SUMP continues to revolve around hydropower generation, flood management and water security on one hand, and concerns over seismic safety, environmental damage and community displacement on the other. Those tensions are real and they aren’t going away.
But Ering’s voice matters here, particularly because it isn’t a new one. This isn’t a politician jumping on a project because his party told him to. This is someone who has lived along the Siang, worked on flood control since the 1970s, and consistently held the same view through every change of political wind.
Whether the SUMP gets built or not, the conversation Ering is pushing for — informed, data-driven, honest — is the one Arunachal deserves to have.
