Contested modernities: place, subjectivity, and Himalayan dam infrastructures

Abstract

The Himalaya are a final frontier for much of the world’s dam infrastruc- ture. When set within seemingly remote border areas, these projects intersect with sociocultural landscapes in ways that reveal nuance in how the development agenda is accepted, adapted, resisted, or rejected. Focusing on a contested dam built along the Ganges – a river sacred to Hindus – in the Indian Himalaya, this chapter explores a diversity of responses to hydroelectric development alongside the mixed evaluations that interlocutors expressed about the projects of modernization and modernity. Analyzing these complexities, the chapter considers if the selective concession to dams in the Himalaya enable a better appreciation of the contested modernities that may be evident in the mountains that serve as Asia’s ‘water tower.’