China is building a dam on the Xiabuqu river

China is building a dam on the Xiabuqu river

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 12:19 PM IST
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There is little cause for alarm over the dam the Chinese are building. Here’s why

The Brahmaputra near Dibrugarh, above; and the Tsangpo at a point about 15 km from the Chinese border in Arunachal Pradesh, where it is known as Siang.

News that China is building a dam on the Xiabuqu river in Tibet has been greeted with alarm in India. The worry is likely overblown, since the Xiabuqu is not a tributary of the Brahmaputra – it is a tributary of the Yarlung Tsangpo, which itself is one among more than 21 major rivers that join to form the mighty Brahmaputra.

Most of the water in the Brahmaputra is from the Indian states it drains, which are Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, West Bengal, Sikkim, Meghalaya and Nagaland, and from Bhutan. The water eventually comes from rain, and Indian official estimates are that only about 7 percent of the Brahmaputra’s water comes from rain in Tibet.

The river being dammed by China has a volume of water discharge only 0.15 percent of that of the Tsangpo at the point it enters India. It is not one of the five major tributaries of the Tsangpo. The effect of this dam on the Brahmaputra is likely to be negligible.

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