Browsing by Author "Bhutia, Ringsel Ongmu"

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    Indigenous resistance to hydropower dams in Sikkim : an analysis of public hearings
    (National Law School of India University, Bangalore, 2023-10-18) Bhutia, Ringsel Ongmu; Dr. Rinku Lamba, - Supervisor
    Despite the vast research on public hearings under Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA), little is known about the association between indigenous resistance and public hearings of Sikkim’s indigenous community called the Lepchas of Dzongu. The overall image that emerges from the literature is an implementation gap of public hearings, and the negative connotation attached to the idea of development by the indigenous group. This study recovers the public hearings, experiences and aspirations of the Lepcha community through qualitative interviews by interviewing 32 Lepchas living in Dzongu, Sikkim, home to the most primitive tribe in Sikkim. An analysis of these interviews yields the Lepchas expectation that complicates and sometimes even challenges the widely held assumption of what constitutes an institutional mechanism such as public hearing in India. The aim is to identify the challenges of the indigenous people in public participation and interrogate a decade long indigenous resistance. Based on the interrogation, it has been confirmed that there is no association between the public hearing and resistance. As a result of India's ongoing conundrum of public hearing, it points to the lack of an accountability and inclusivity framework. This calls into doubt the democratic concept of public participation included in the Environmental Impact Assessment Notification of 2006 due to its inadequate support for being more inclusive and people-centric. The democratic principle of citizen involvement in decision-making is undermined by restricting public participation to only one stage of the development process. Overall, there is a problem with actual execution of the already-existing public hearing system. This begs the question of whether it's necessary to change the EIA framework to be more inclusive or whether we can urge for increased vigilance to improve implementation at the bottom.