Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Geoforum journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/geoforum Hydropower development and the meaning of place. Multi-ethnic hydropower struggles in Sikkim, India Rinchu Doma Dukpa a, ⁎ , Deepa Joshi b , Rutgerd Boelens c,d,e a Dept. Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands b Water Governance and Feminist Political Ecology, Centre for Water, Agroecology and Resilience, Coventry University, United Kingdom c Political Ecology of Water, Dept. Environmental Sciences, Wageningen University, P.O. Box 47, 6700 AA Wageningen, The Netherlands d CEDLA Center for Latin American Research and Documentation, University of Amsterdam, Roetersstraat 33, 1018 WB Amsterdam, The Netherlands e Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies, University of Amsterdam, P.O. Box 15629, 1001 NC Amsterdam, The Netherlands ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Hydropower Contestation Solidarities Ethnicity Sense of place Sikkim India ABSTRACT Academic research and media tend to emphasize the strong opposition to hydropower development in Sikkim, India, and position this as resistance to an environmentally-destructive, trans-local development, particularly by the culturally-rooted, ethnic minority Bhutia and Lepcha communities. There are several accounts of contesta- tions of hydropower development projects in India’s Eastern Himalayan States – signifying robust and pre- dictable indigenous people-place connections. Why then, was the implementation of the largest, Teesta Stage III Hydro Electric Project, located in Chungthang Gram Panchayat Unit in North Sikkim, in the heartland of the Bhutia-Lepcha region, not contested? In unraveling this anomaly, our focus is to understand how people-place connections are shaped and differentially experienced. Our findings are that hydropower development has eli- cited diverse responses locally, ranging from fierce contestation to indifference, to enthusiastic acceptance. The complexity and malleability of “place” and people’s “sense of place” provide evidence that indigeneity does not always indicate resistance to large-scale project interventions. In ethnically and socio-politically fractured communities like Chungthang, trans-local developments can reinforce ethno-social divides and disparities, and re-align traditional place-based ethno-centric solidarities along new politically-motivated lines. We argue that linear, one-dimensional views of local social coalescence around place belie more complex relations, which evolve dynamically in diverse socio-cultural and politico-economic contexts. 1. Introduction The Eastern Himalayan State of Sikkim, in India, is said to have a hydropower peak potential of 8000 megawatts (MW) (GoS, 2015a). This implies a key contribution to the 50,000 MW Indian Hydroelectric Initiative, launched in 2003 (Ramanathan and Abeygunawardena, 2007). A total of 29 large dams were proposed across Sikkim’s network of rivers and tributaries, mostly located in the North District in 2003 (Dharmadikary, 2008). Five large dams have been commissioned and over 10 are in different phases (CEA, 2016, 2017). This “hydro-rush” by India’s Central Government (GoI) and the Sikkim State Government (GoS) has prompted diverse responses. The North District (see Map 1), inhabited largely by indigenous 1 Lepcha and Bhutia communities, is the centre of dam-related conflicts in the region. Research accounts of the opposition to large hydropower dams in Sikkim speak about contestations around geo-ethnicity; the objection to development-in- duced degradation and disregard of sacred and spiritual Bhutia-Lepcha (“BL”) landscapes/place (Arora, 2007a; Little, 2008, 2009; McDuie-Ra, 2011). In fact, in Sikkim, contestations against dams are considered to be “a Lepcha thing” (Little, 2010b:121). ‘Place – or, more accurately, the defense of constructions of place – has become an important object of struggle in the strategies of social movements’ (Escobar, 2001:139). In India, there are many accounts of indigenous people-nature relationships and struggles (Routledge, 2003; Sangvai, 2000; Narula, 2008). In discussing the struggles against dis- placement in the Sardar Sarovar dam on the Narmada river by the Adivasis, Baviskar (1995, 2005) however notes that claims of their unique indigenous identities, including their ecological virtues, are often defined and romanticised by outside others. She (ibid: 5111) notes that ‘we cannot assume that indigeneity is intrinsically a sign of https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.01.006 Received 23 December 2016; Received in revised form 10 January 2018; Accepted 11 January 2018 ⁎ Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: rinchu.dukpa@wur.nl (R.D. Dukpa), ac3771@coventry.ac.uk (D. Joshi), rutgerd.boelens@wur.nl (R. Boelens). 1 The interpretation of the term ‘indigenous’ is myriad and contextual, depending also on who uses the concept and under what conditions. In India, the term commonly refers to the Tribal or the Adivasi, i.e. original dwellers (Rycroft, 2014). In this paper, we follow the 1994 definition framed during the United Nation Workshops on Indigenous and Tribal People’s Struggle for Right to Self-determination and Self-government (see Das, 2001). The terms indigenous and Adivasis are used interchangeably in this paper. Geoforum 89 (2018) 60–72 0016-7185/ © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T