Environmental Movements in Northeast India: State-wise Overview

Northeast India is one of the world’s recognised biodiversity hotspots, with dense forests, mighty rivers, and unique wetlands spread across its eight states. It is also a region the government has long viewed as a resource frontier – a place to extract coal, harness rivers for hydropower, and push through large infrastructure projects. This tension between development and ecology has given rise to some of the most determined environmental movements in the country. Across the hills and valleys, local communities, students’ bodies, peasant organisations, and civil society groups have mobilised to protect their land, livelihoods, and ecological heritage. This state-wise overview examines how these movements have unfolded and why they matter.

Why the Northeast became a battleground for the environment
Assam: the anti-dam movement on the Brahmaputra
Peasants, students, and civil society unite
Arunachal Pradesh: indigenous resistance on the Siang
The fight over the Siang multi-purpose project
Manipur: dams, wetlands, and lessons learned
The Loktak Lake crisis
Stopping the Tipaimukh Dam
Sikkim: the Lepcha struggle to save the Teesta
Affected Citizens of Teesta
Meghalaya: the long fight over coal mining
The NGT ban and its aftermath
Common threads across the movements

Why the Northeast became a battleground for the environment

The central question driving these movements is simple but profound: who has the right to use the region’s natural resources? Is it the local communities who depend on forests and rivers for survival, or the corporations and the centralised state seeking energy and revenue? Scholars note that protest in such regions often emerges from livelihood crises faced by marginalised populations dependent on natural resources, a pattern that links the Northeast to earlier struggles like the Chipko Andolan and the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

What makes the Northeast distinct is its geography. The region is seismically active, geologically fragile, and ecologically sensitive. The government has planned to generate massive amounts of hydropower here – projects intended to turn states like Arunachal Pradesh into India’s “future powerhouse.” But the same rivers that promise electricity also sustain agriculture, fisheries, and indigenous cultures downstream. When the Centre for Science and Environment observed that the strongest environmental protests in India have centred around dams and displacement, the Northeast proved the point repeatedly.

Assam: the anti-dam movement on the Brahmaputra

Assam has seen one of the most powerful anti-dam mobilisations in recent memory, focused on the Lower Subansiri Hydroelectric Project at Gerukamukh on the Assam-Arunachal Pradesh border. The 2,000-MW project, built by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), became a flashpoint because of fears about its impact on downstream districts like Lakhimpur, Dhemaji, and Majuli.

Peasants, students, and civil society unite

The movement gathered force when the Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti (KMSS), a peasant organisation formed by RTI activist Akhil Gogoi in 2005, took up the cause alongside the All Assam Students’ Union (AASU) and dozens of ethnic and Mising community organisations. Activists feared that a dam in such a fragile seismic zone could devastate downstream populations in the event of a major earthquake. In 2011, KMSS sent a petition signed by more than 110,000 people to the Prime Minister demanding a moratorium on mega-dam clearances in the Northeast.

The protests were so intense that they forced construction to halt for several years through blockades of equipment and materials. Commentators noted that the anti-dam movement in the Brahmaputra valley acquired a strong subnationalist colour, drawing the whole of Assamese civil society into its support. Work eventually resumed at the site after an eight-year pause, but the opposition has never fully subsided.

Arunachal Pradesh: indigenous resistance on the Siang

Arunachal Pradesh sits at the heart of India’s hydropower ambitions, with the state government having signed 168 memoranda of understanding with public and private companies for big dams. This scale of planning has met sustained resistance from indigenous communities who argue that large projects threaten their land rights, cultural heritage, and livelihoods, often without proper community consultation.

The fight over the Siang multi-purpose project

The proposed mega-dam on the Siang river – which flows from China into Arunachal Pradesh – has become a recent focal point. The Adi Students’ Union and the Siang Indigenous Farmers’ Forum (SIFF) have led protests against pre-feasibility surveys. In a striking example of how culture fuels these movements, Arunachal tribes have invoked their age-old divine ties with the Siang to oppose the dam, even as the government frames the project as necessary to counter strategic threats from China. Activists leading these protests have at times faced legal action for defying prohibitory orders, showing how contested the issue remains.

Manipur: dams, wetlands, and lessons learned

Manipur’s environmental movements are shaped by hard experience. The state’s resistance to new dams is rooted in the damage caused by an existing one – the Loktak Hydroelectric Project.

The Loktak Lake crisis

Loktak is the largest freshwater lake in the Northeast and was declared a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention in 1990. It is famous for its floating islands called phumdis and is the only habitat of the endangered Sangai deer. Yet the 105-MW hydroelectric project commissioned in 1983 has been blamed for ecological harm – critics allege the barrage disrupted natural dredging processes, contributing to flash floods. The project submerged more than 50,000 acres of agricultural land and displaced indigenous communities. Demands to decommission the dam have persisted for years, and after severe flooding, even the ruling party’s state leadership eventually wrote to the Centre seeking a review – a first for a northeastern state.

More recently, fishing communities have protested moves by the Loktak Development Authority to clear huts and traditional fishing structures from the lake. Locals fear that the clean-up is a way to convert the lake from a fishing commons into a high-end tourist site, displacing those who have depended on it for generations.

Stopping the Tipaimukh Dam

The proposed 1,500-MW Tipaimukh Dam on the Barak river generated even fiercer opposition. Communities resisted it for more than 15 years, precisely because they had already witnessed the devastating impact of the Loktak project. The dam would have submerged around 27,000 hectares of forest and farmland, and the site sits in one of the most seismically active zones in the world. Groups including the Action Committee Against Tipaimukh Project united across ethnic lines, and the resistance even drew support from neighbouring Bangladesh, which feared downstream effects. The strong, sustained opposition is widely cited as a case where a major project backed by powerful national and regional actors was effectively stalled.

Sikkim: the Lepcha struggle to save the Teesta

In Sikkim, the anti-dam movement is deeply tied to indigenous identity. The Lepcha community, recognised as a particularly vulnerable tribal group, regards the land of Dzongu in North Sikkim and the rivers Teesta and Rangeet as sacred.

Affected Citizens of Teesta

In 2007, one of the largest movements against hydropower in Sikkim was launched under the banner of Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT), supported by the Concerned Lepcha of Sikkim and the Sangha of Dzongu. The community had already endured environmental damage from the Teesta Stage III and Stage V projects, which together produce over 1,700 MW even though Sikkim itself needs only a fraction of that. Through hunger strikes, sustained protest, and legal challenges in forums like the National Green Tribunal, the Lepchas succeeded in putting the Teesta Stage IV project on hold, with the elected panchayats of Dzongu repeatedly rejecting it. Their argument blends ecology with the worship of mountains and rivers, making the movement as much about cultural survival as environmental protection.

Meghalaya: the long fight over coal mining

Meghalaya presents a different kind of environmental conflict – one centred on mining rather than dams. The state’s hills are rich in coal, but the dominant method of extraction, known as rat-hole mining, is both dangerous and environmentally destructive.

The NGT ban and its aftermath

In 2014, the National Green Tribunal imposed a ban on rat-hole coal mining. The ban followed a petition complaining that water in the Kopili river had turned acidic from mine effluent flowing downstream into Assam. Rat-hole mining had also caused numerous deaths, with miners – sometimes including children – sent down narrow shafts that frequently flooded or collapsed. A tragedy in December 2018, when miners were trapped in a flooded shaft in East Jaintia Hills, confirmed that illegal mining continued despite the ban.

The issue remains politically charged. When the state government inaugurated its first “scientific” coal mining project in 2024, environmental activists accused it of playing into corporate interests, pointing to thousands of illegal mines still operating and the lasting damage to the state’s waterbodies and public health. Garo and other indigenous communities have also resisted plans to mine coal, limestone, and uranium without their consent and without proper environmental assessment.

Common threads across the movements

Despite their state-specific causes, these movements share important features. First, they are largely community-led and identity-driven, with indigenous groups framing rivers, lakes, and forests not just as resources but as sacred and cultural heritage. Second, they rely on a mix of strategies – peaceful demonstrations, petition campaigns, hunger strikes, blockades, and legal challenges through bodies like the National Green Tribunal. Third, they highlight a recurring grievance: that the promised benefits of development rarely reach affected communities, while the environmental costs fall disproportionately on local populations.

Increasingly, activists are also reframing their arguments using the language of climate science, which offers anti-dam coalitions a new way to counter state claims to land and resources. This shift connects local struggles to global concerns about ecological fragility, seismic risk, and the rights of indigenous peoples.

What do you think? Should the energy and revenue needs of the wider country take precedence over the ecological and cultural concerns of the Northeast’s indigenous communities – or is there a model of development that can genuinely balance both? And when a region produces far more electricity than it consumes, who should have the final say over how its rivers and forests are used?

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Table of Contents

Why the Northeast became a battleground for the environment 🔗

Assam: the anti-dam movement on the Brahmaputra 🔗

Peasants, students, and civil society unite 🔗

Arunachal Pradesh: indigenous resistance on the Siang 🔗

The fight over the Siang multi-purpose project 🔗

Manipur: dams, wetlands, and lessons learned 🔗

The Loktak Lake crisis 🔗

Stopping the Tipaimukh Dam 🔗

Sikkim: the Lepcha struggle to save the Teesta 🔗

Affected Citizens of Teesta 🔗

Meghalaya: the long fight over coal mining 🔗

The NGT ban and its aftermath 🔗

Common threads across the movements 🔗