Arunahcal Pradesh is awarding hydroelectric projects to private companies at the breakneck speed of one every nine days without proper scrutiny. A report by Arnab Pratim Dutta Once you reach Lower Dibang Valley in Arunachal Pradesh, you know you have stepped into the shadowy side of "shining" India -the cell phone stops catching signals, the roads are worn out and the electricity supply, erratic. If you drive 40 km out of its district headquarters Roing to Nizam Ghat and then trek for three hours in Mishmi hills, you will reach Pather Camp, a nowhere destination in absolute wilderness. A helipad is the last thing you will expect here. Yet there it stands, a testimony to the importance of this place. Pather Camp is where India 's biggest dam, the Dibang Multipurpose Project (DMP), is proposed to come up. Dams are a big idea in Arunachal Pradesh, touted as the open sesame to the state's financial prosperity. They have the resonance of both promise and apprehension. Promise because they can be the harbinger of development-one paisa per unit of power the 3,000-mw DMP will generate is promised to be spent on local development. And apprehension because the people fear that dams will pave the way for the government to take over the control of natural resources or worse, ruin them-they opposed DMP at a public hearing in January, and stalled the next hearing in March. Hydroelectric projects are also a big booming business in the state. In just 11 months from April 2007 to February 2008, the Arunachal Pradesh government signed agreements for 38 projects with private companies. That is three-and-a-half projects a month or a project every nine days. Many of these companies have no expertise in building dams. Where will it stop? The government plans to erect 104 hydroelectric projects in the state, with a cumulative generation capacity of about 56,000 mw - one-third of India 's hydropower potential. It has smelt a cash cow in these projects. "If the available potential (hydropower) can be harnessed, the state will be floating 'Hydro Dollars'" like petro dollars in Arab countries, says the state hydropower policy. The Arunachal Pradesh government estimates that mega hydropower projects planned in the state can augment its annual income by up to Rs 8,000 crore through the sale of its share of electricity-the 2008 state budget was Rs 2,065 crore. A senior official of the Arunachal Pradesh government, who prefers to remain anonymous, says the government wants to generate most of this power in the next 12-14 years and, therefore, it is in a hurry to allot projects to private developers. According to the official, private players entered the hydroelectric sector in 2005. In April that year, the prime minister announced the North-East Water Resource Authority on the lines of the us Tennessee Valley Authority as an independent corporation. This authority had the World Bank's support. While all the six other states of the Northeast accepted the draft proposal for setting up the authority, Arunachal Pradesh opposed it. Recognizing the authority would have meant placing the rights to river systems under its control. The then Arunachal Pradesh chief minister, Gegong Apang, instead came up with the state's Hydro Power Policy in November 2005. With the hydropower policy in place, Apang initiated private developers in the sector. Public sector units like the National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC) began to lose projects allotted to them by the central government. In 2005-06, five mega projects, for which the detailed project reports had been prepared or were being prepared, were given to private firms. Siyom (1,000 mw) and Tato-II (700 mw) went to Reliance Energy; Hirong (500 mw) and Lower Siang (1,600 mw) to Jaypee Associates; and 1,000 mw Naying to DS Constructions, a real-estate developer and hydropower contractor. The next year nine agreements for projects with the total generation capacity of 4,425 mw were signed with Bhilwara Energy, litttle-known Mountain Fall, KSK Electricity Financing and GMR Energy. By then a political turmoil was brewing. -Down to earth feature