How Tamil Nadu’s green energy push in the Nilgiris undermines the Dravidian development model

Green energy is threatening Tamil Nadu’s greenest district – the Nilgiris.

This irony brings into focus the paradoxes of Tamil Nadu’s Dravidian growth model: even as it ensures that the state has enviable development indicators, the sustainable energy projects that fuel it, heighten the economic and ecological vulnerabilities of some regions.

This anxiety is evident in the concerns about two hydro-electricity projects in Kundah taluka in the Nilgiris.

In May, an expert appraisal committee of the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change granted permission for an environmental impact assessment to be conducted for a 1,000-megawatt hydropower dam in the Upper Bhavani region of the south Nilgiris. This step means that the project is in a preconstruction and clearances stage.

Though this project will use a pumped storage system that is considered environmentally friendly, experts and activists have serious reservations about the dam on the Bhavani river.

The project envisages a tunnel being constructed within 2 km of the Mukurthi National Park. Mukurthi’s shola-grassland ecosystem is habitat to more than 200 Nilgiri Tahrs, Tamil Nadu’s state animal, and to the endemic Nilgiri Laughing Thrush.

The Upper Bhavani dam is not the only contentious project in The Nilgiris. In April, the Sillahalla Pumped Storage Hydro-Electric Project in Kundah taluka was put on hold.

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