Nepal glacial flood prompts fresh appeal to Centre for hydropower policy overhaul

By A Representative 

A glacial lake outburst flood in the Nepal-Tibet region of the Himalayas, which has killed more than a thousand people and left several thousand still missing ten days on, has prompted a veteran Indian power sector professional to write to three Union ministers and the Vice-Chairperson of NITI Aayog, urging a comprehensive review of the country's plans to expand dam-based hydropower and pumped-storage projects (PSPs).

In the letter, Shankar Sharma, a power and climate policy analyst based in Sagara in the Western Ghats, describes the disaster and its toll of "massive infrastructure destruction, including multiple hydel projects," and argues that it "should corroborate the message" of a recent statement by Union Jal Shakti Minister C R Paatil. Sharma writes that, more broadly, "the cumulative evidence increasingly suggests that hydropower infrastructure—particularly large projects in young, tectonically active and climatically unstable mountain regions—faces a new category of compound risk," adding that "floods, landslides, glacial and rock collapses, tunnel failures and worker entrapment should not be treated merely as isolated engineering accidents."

The representation, dated September 5, 2026 — India's Teachers' Day — was addressed to the Union Ministers for Jal Shakti and Power, the Union Minister for Environment, Forest and Climate Change, and the Vice-Chairperson of NITI Aayog, with a copy sent "with respectful compliments" to the Prime Minister. Sharma identifies himself as "an electrical engineer, and a power sector professional with over 45 years of experience/close association with the power sector in India, New Zealand and Australia," and offers to "make a detailed presentation" to the government if desired.

Sharma is careful to frame the appeal as something short of outright opposition to hydropower, stating at the outset that "the purpose of this representation is not to advocate a blanket rejection of hydropower," and acknowledging that the technology "has historically contributed significantly to India's electricity system" and can still provide "electricity generation, grid balancing, peaking support and energy storage." His concern, he writes, is that "the present approach to the identification and development of large numbers of new hydropower and PSP projects appears to be moving faster than the corresponding development of a comprehensive, technology-neutral, full-societal-cost and long-term ecological assessment framework."

The letter sets out the scale of what is being contemplated: the Central Electricity Authority's "current planning includes a national roadmap to achieve 100 GW of hydro pumped-storage capacity by 2035–36," building on the Planning Commission's earlier estimate of "150,000 MW" of total hydro potential and the CEA's more recent identification of sites for "200,000 MW capacity of pumped storage plants" — figures Sharma sets against India's existing operating hydroelectric capacity of "approximately 57,240 MW." Given this gap, he writes, "it is only natural that civil society groups are genuinely concerned about the potential issues with the projected capacity addition."

Sharma urges the government to distinguish between "technical potential," "economically exploitable potential," "environmentally acceptable potential," "climate-resilient potential" and, "most importantly, the actual quantity of dam-based storage genuinely required after all other feasible alternatives have been assessed." He argues that "the identification of a technically suitable dam site or an estimated national PSP potential cannot, by itself, establish that the corresponding project represents the best option for the country," and proposes that the central policy question ought to be: "What electricity-system service is actually required, and what combination of available technologies can provide that service with the lowest total societal cost and the least irreversible ecological and social damage?"

That question, he says, is especially pressing given India's rapid expansion of alternatives, which the letter lists as including "distributed solar and wind generation," "utility-scale and distributed Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS)," "renewable-plus-storage hybrid systems," "agrivoltaics," "demand response," "demand-side management," "smart grids" and "mini- and micro-grids." On this basis, Sharma submits that "additional dam-based hydropower and PSP capacity should not be treated as presumptively necessary, merely because a suitable site has been identified, or because hydropower is categorised as renewable energy."

Returning to Minister Paatil's remarks, Sharma calls it an "epochal statement" that "building new dams was no longer a viable and long-term water management solution due to high costs, land acquisition hurdles, and shrinking river flows," and suggests it "must have been issued after a lot of deliberations, and careful consideration," and "may even be assumed as having the Union Cabinet's endorsement."

The letter also points to international precedent, noting that "by the end of 2025, 2,350 documented dams had been removed in the United States since 1912," while Europe "in 2024, removed 542 barriers in 23 countries, reconnecting approximately 2,900 km of rivers," and that "the European Union has adopted the goal of restoring at least 25,000 km of free-flowing rivers by 2030 through its wider Nature Restoration agenda."

Sharma closes by asking the government "to accord serious consideration to every one of such societal level concerns, and to establish a rigorous, transparent and technology-neutral national framework, before committing the country to any large-scale expansion of dam-based hydropower and pumped-storage infrastructure that may involve irreversible ecological and societal costs."