The Brahmaputra, unlike many rivers in India, is unusual in that most rivers are typically feminized. The Ganga, Yamuna, and Narmada are all associated with female divinity — the Goddess. But the Brahmaputra, as ancient texts and regional traditions view it, is divine in origin, warranting association with Brahma himself rather than a goddess figure. The Brahmaputra’s masculine identity is not poetic flourish but cultural judgement, signalling a river understood as powerful, ferocious, and resistant to control — hence names like “the mighty Brahmaputra” and “the untameable Brahmaputra”.
In Assam, the Brahmaputra, known as the Luit, is both a lifeline and a destroyer. It feeds fields and fisheries but also destroys lands and homes every monsoon. Folklore says the Luit becomes enraged when human arrogance attempts to “bind” or “tame” the river. It punishes hubris, not weakness, and its devastation should be seen as cosmic correction, not random disaster.
However, these tales have not deterred China, which harbours ambitions to control the Yarlung Tsangpo, as the Brahmaputra is known in Tibet. China is moving ahead with its mega hydropower project at Motuo on the upper Yarlung Tsangpo, which is likely to have grave consequences for India, especially Assam — the first casualty of precisely the hubris that ancient folklore has warned about. With upstream manipulation of the river that carries no accountability for downstream consequences, floods and devastation may no longer be purely natural, shifting the debate from a purely environmental one to a national security concern.
Unlike other parts of India, Assam has no upstream storage on its side of the border to absorb shocks. Any upstream manipulation of the waters, even if short-term, will have consequences, and China’s Motuo project injects precisely that risk into a system that is already naturally unpredictable. While Beijing insists the project is not unusual, the fact is that a project of approximately 60-70 gigawatts, much larger than the Three Gorges, requires heavy construction and manipulation of terrain. With tunnels, gates, underground caverns, and operational control, natural flow disruptions will be inevitable. If the Three Gorges Dam is any indication, downstream casualties for China are acceptable externalities.
China’s water game
It was after the Three Gorges began generating power in 2003 that sediment flow to the Yangtze Delta dropped dramatically, accelerating erosion and saltwater intrusion near Shanghai by the 2010s. In Wuhan and large parts of Hubei and Anhui provinces, the Yangtze floods of July 2020 forced evacuations of millions. Reservoir releases, timed by dam management rather than river cycles, compressed risk downstream. Furthermore, many experts have argued that even Chinese downstream authorities often lacked real-time clarity on discharge decisions during the floods of 2016 and 2020. It is estimated that the Three Gorges Dam displaced over 1.3 million people, triggered landslides, and shifted flood risks downstream, despite being built entirely within China.
On the Mekong, Chinese upstream dams have altered flow regimes so dramatically that downstream countries now face droughts and floods out of sync with natural cycles, often without advance warning. Although the Three Gorges Dam is built on the Yangtze and not on the Mekong, the governance model it represents has strongly influenced how China operates its upstream Mekong dams, with tangible downstream effects. The model prioritises large reservoirs and controlled releases driven by domestic needs rather than basin-wide coordination.
In 2016, China released water from reservoirs during an El Niño drought. While the move provided temporary relief to Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam, the incident became an example of successful flood and drought management — providing technical and political justification for similar upstream control on international rivers. It reinforced China’s dam-centric governance model and indirectly influenced how Beijing manages transboundary rivers that affect its neighbours.
However, in 2019-2020 it was widely reported that upstream reservoirs holding water during the wet season were the cause of unusually low water levels on the Mekong. In a 2020 study conducted by Eyes on Earth, using physical river gauge, evidence from the Mekong River Commission and remote sensing processes confirm that the drought was related to China’s water management policy. The findings prove that for six months in 2019, despite China having a normal-to-above-average precipitation in most areas around the Mekong, its dams held back vast amount of water even as downstream countries suffered through a severe and unprecedented wet-season drought. This disrupted fisheries in Thailand, weakened the Tonlé Sap flood cycle in Cambodia, and worsened salinity intrusion in Vietnam’s delta.
In August 2021, rapid daily fluctuations linked to hydropower peaking caused erosion and safety risks along stretches of the river in Thailand and Laos. An article in Dialogue Earth reported that the Mekong’s average sediment load used to be 160 million tonnes, but the construction of dams on the river has reduced this by almost 80 per cent.
Similarly, the Jinghong dam went live in 2008. It cut off the sediment flow for rivers such as Tien, leading to erosion and accelerating riverbank collapse in Cambodia and Vietnam two years later. People in Dong Thap province in Vietnam lost their homes. The Cambodia Daily reported that the Tonle Sap riverbank too met with a similar fate when a 25-meter-wide section of the riverbank collapsed in Phnom Penh’s Russei Keo district. This was the third time the bank had collapsed since 2007.
Also read: China’s Brahmaputra dam is also a military asset. It raises alarm for India
India needs to be careful
The consequences for Assam, in the long term, are unlikely to be very different. Majuli, the world’s largest inhabited river island, sits on the Brahmaputra and has been shrinking for decades. Sediment trapped behind upstream dams will reduce the replenishment that Majuli desperately needs, only accelerate its erosion. Monsoon amplification through sudden upstream releases, accidental or operational, can also breach embankments designed and shaped for historical flow patterns, not artificial ones. Assam already floods, and Motuo risks making those floods sharper, faster, and harder to predict. Additionally, retaining water upstream during lean months can subtly alter river behaviour downstream, affecting agriculture, fisheries, groundwater recharge, and livelihoods that depend on predictable flows. But most critically: will India have access to real-time information on reservoir levels, release schedules, and operational decisions?
India needs to urgently assess its infrastructure options. With relations thawing with China, opacity on developments that sit at the crossroads of water security, territorial security, and national security cannot be afforded — notwithstanding the human cost that will come with migration, land loss, and internal stability. India must also keep in mind that hydropower projects can be dual-use: they improve logistics, surveillance, and sustained military deployment. Strengthening embankments, restoring wetlands, and managing sediment are therefore not development schemes. They are defensive measures.
Rami Niranjan Desai is a Distinguished Fellow at the India Foundation, New Delhi. She tweets @ramindesai. Views are personal
(Edited by Prashant Dixit)