“Ngamu, pengba, ngaton or khabak, ngakra …” Tongbram Ahongjao names fish varieties that have gone missing from his environment over the past 40 years. A sexagenarian resident of Thanga, an island village inside Loktak, the largest freshwater lake of northeastern India located in Manipur state, he has seen the lake area change. “Moirang phou, kakching phou, chimlei, tao thabi…,” he continues, speaking of rice varieties that disappeared from the lowlands around the lake. To be fair, the lowlands disappeared in the first place. At some mythological time, Poubi Lai, the giant, dragon-headed python, which lived under the waters of the Loktak lake, ate one man every night, until King Kabui Salang Maiba killed it with a trick, goes the legend. For centuries, Poubi Lai symbolised disaster at the community level for the Loktak people.
Then, four decades ago, in 1983, disaster came in the shape of a hydropower project, say the local people – the Ithai barrage on Manipur (or Imphal) river that uses Loktak as the reservoir. As of March 2022, the Loktak multipurpose project is Manipur’s only functional hydropower project, with an installed capacity of 105 megawatts (MW) of electricity, and is Manipur’s main source of power.
Declared a Ramsar site, or wetland of global importance in 1990, it was listed in the Montreux Record as early as 1993, signifying “Ramsar sites where changes in ecological character have occurred, are occurring or are likely to occur.” Three decades since then, there is no dearth of stories that reflect the dirty side of clean energy.
“Tao thabi (a rice variety), in particular, was a great source of energy… it’d been a favourite with local sportspersons … And don’t forget the heikak (water chestnut), a cheap source of nutrition and also income, once found in abundance, growing increasingly rarer,” Ahongjao told Mongabay-India.
Among the fishes he named, ngamu is channa/snakehead, pengba is Osteobrama belangeri, ngaton or khabak is Labeo bata and ngakra is catfish, going by their other names. At a young age, Ahongjao fished in the lake during monsoon and farmed on the lowlands during winter, just like most other people living in and around the Loktak wetlands. But the dam has impacted all local sources of nutrition and income – fish, rice and edible plants.
“Fish varieties dwindled because the Ithai barrage blocked the path of the migratory fishes that used to swim upstream from Bay of Bay Bengal through Chindwin river (in Myanmar) to spawn in Manipur river and Loktak lake,” environmentalist Salam Rajesh, a member of the technical committee of Manipur State Wetlands Authority, told Mongabay-India. “It took a big economic toll on the fishing community of the Loktak wetlands.”
Sprawling over 230 square kilometres, Loktak is large; it has a direct catchment area of 1,064 sq. km. and serves as a source of livelihood for about 100,00 people living in and around the wetlands.
But size is not its claim to fame: it’s the phumdis, the floating islands of biomass that make Loktak a unique landscape. Described as ‘thick, floating mats of weeds covered with soil’ in the Ramsar listing, the phumdis usually have about 2 metres floating above water level and 3 metres below. They used to sink during winter to extract nutrients from the base of the lake. But that cycle has stopped. The water level never goes down.
The phumdis are also the only natural habitat of the endangered Sangai, the brow-antlered or dancing deer which dwell on a 22 sq. km. stretch of phumdis inside the 40 sq. km. Keibul Lamjao National Park, the world’s only floating protected area, is part of the Loktak landscape.
Before the barrage came up, the water level at the lake used to go down in winter, receding from hectares of lowlands, making them available for growing rice. But the barrage requires maintenance of a particular water level throughout the year. The lowlands never come out of water.
“Heikaks (water chestnuts) used to grow mostly in winter when the lake was less deep. Sunlight reached the bottom of the lake and helped the heikak germinate. Now, as the water level is always high, heikaks do not grow that much,” Budha Khwairakpam, a resident of Ithing village on the edge of the lake, explained to Mongabay-India.
The National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC), which built and operates the project, claimed that apart from generating 105 MW of hydropower, the surrounding area “has also been benefited by development of infrastructure, education, medical facilities and employment avenues” and that the power station also provides lift irrigation for over 23,000 hectares of land in the valley.
Notwithstanding their claims, the demand for decommissioning the Ithai barrage has continued to grow. In 2017, the then Manipur governor Najma Heptullah had said at a programme that she was “working very hard for the removal of Ithai barrage” due to its adverse economic and ecological impact. In fact, flood has become a regular phenomenon both in the villages upstream and downstream of the Ithai barrage.
Chairen, a village about 11 km downstream of the barrage, bore the burnt. “Chairen has been famous for its pottery. But sediments deposited by successive floods due to the barrage have covered the village’s original soil under layers. The new soil is unfit for their craft,” Jiten Yumnum, secretary of the Imphal-based non-profit Center for Research and Advocacy, Manipur (CRAM), told Mongabay-India…