View from the Margins: A Lepcha activist describes the destructive development in Sikkim

Voting is often the only chance that many of India's marginalised groups get to express themselves. As national elections approach, Scroll's reporters fanned out across the country to talk to groups with little socio-political power as part of a series called the View from the Margins. The aim: try to understand how the powerless and the voiceless have fared under a decade of the Modi government.

Mayalmit Lepcha had just a few hours in Delhi after landing from Sikkim and before heading out to Himachal Pradesh for a meeting. In that time she wanted to squeeze in three important things – meeting a senior lawyer, an interview with this writer and enjoy sev batata puri.

“I eat it every time I come to Delhi,” she gushed. As she indulged in chaat at Delhi’s India Habitat Centre, she painted a picture of her home in North Sikkim’s Dzongu – the Teesta flowing below, the snowfall on higher mountains, and the hugging Kanchenjunga national Park.

Mayalmit is a general secretary of the Affected Citizens of Teesta, an organisation formed by the indigenous Lepcha community of Sikkim that is fighting against the indiscriminate building of hydropower projects on River Teesta. Lepchas, a Scheduled Tribe, form 7% of the state’s...

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