The editorial argues that India’s proposed 11.2 GW (11,200 MW) Siang Upper Multipurpose Project (SUMP) in Arunachal Pradesh — conceived largely as a strategic buffer against China’s ~60 GW mega-dam on the Yarlung Tsangpo — cannot be pushed through by force. A project meant to protect national interest must still comply with the land rights and legal protections of the people it displaces.

Figure 1 — Location of the proposed Siang Upper Multipurpose Project

SUMP sits on the Siang shortly after the river enters India from Tibet — the first Indian stretch to feel any change in upstream flows. Map courtesy the source newspaper, 3 November 2026; reproduced with credit for educational use.

• Scale: about 60 GW, roughly three times China’s Three Gorges Dam (22.5 GW). Construction formally began in July 2025 on the lower reaches of the Yarlung Tsangpo.
• Design: five cascading power stations exploiting a fall of roughly 2,000 m over about 50 km near the Great Bend.
• India’s concerns: the possibility that flows could be diverted (causing lean-season drought) or released suddenly (causing floods in Arunachal and Assam). China says there will be no downstream harm but has not shared engineering details.
• Earlier precedent: the Zangmu dam (operational since 2015) was China’s first large hydropower plant on the river.

• No water-sharing treaty exists between India and China (contrast the Indus Waters Treaty, 1960 with Pakistan and the Ganga Water Treaty, 1996 with Bangladesh).
• Hydrological data MoUs: China has supplied flood-season data from upstream stations under MoUs first signed in 2002 and renewed periodically. The arrangement has been interrupted and renewal delayed.
• Expert Level Mechanism (ELM): set up in 2006 to discuss trans-border river issues; it has produced no binding commitments.
• Latest: China has agreed to share hydrological data during emergencies on humanitarian grounds — but not operational data for the mega-dam.
• International law: neither country is party to the UN Watercourses Convention, 1997 (in force 2014), which codifies equitable and reasonable utilisation and the no-significant-harm rule.

The editorial accepts the strategic anxiety but questions the method. Deploying security forces to guard survey teams and invoking a State anti-unlawful-activities law against activists, it argues, confirms local fears that land will be taken.

It treats the problem as part of a wider top-down model of hydropower development in Arunachal Pradesh.

• Limits of the “buffer” logic: much of the Brahmaputra’s water in Assam and Bangladesh comes from the monsoon and from tributaries downstream of Tibet, so China cannot simply control total flow. The risk is concentrated near the border, where SUMP sits.
• Operational blind spot: SUMP needs data on both the mega-dam’s operations and downstream inflows; without Chinese data, the protection a 70% reservoir actually provides is uncertain.
• Geological risk: the eastern Himalaya is among the world’s most tectonically active and erosion-prone landscapes.
• Diplomacy is unavoidable: operating SUMP safely will require engagement with China, complicated by Beijing’s disputed claims on Arunachal Pradesh.
• Bottom line: national need does not exempt the State from following all relevant laws and protections; antagonising citizens undermines the national interest it claims to serve.

• Case for SUMP: it provides flood moderation, a strategic water reserve, firm clean power and a basis for asserting India’s prior use of the river — a principle of international water law.
• Case for caution:
  • A very high dam in Seismic Zone V raises safety concerns.
  • The Brahmaputra’s sediment load will cause reservoir siltation.
  • GLOF and landslide hazards are severe in the region.
  • No cumulative impact assessment has been done for the many dams planned in the basin.
  • Fish, agriculture and riverine livelihoods downstream could be affected.
• Downstream credibility: how India treats Assam’s and Bangladesh’s concerns will shape the strength of its own case against China.
• Lessons from Subansiri: the 2,000 MW Subansiri Lower Project was delayed for years by downstream protests and safety concerns. Early, genuine consultation costs less than prolonged conflict.

• Consent-based process: free, prior and informed engagement with the Adi community, with transparent SIA, benefit-sharing (equity, local employment, a share of revenue) and protection of customary rights.
• Basin-wide science: a cumulative impact and dam-break study for the whole Siang–Brahmaputra cascade, with independent seismic review.
• Upstream intelligence: India’s own satellite-based and in-situ monitoring of Tibetan flows, reducing dependence on Chinese data.
• Diplomacy: push for a comprehensive data-sharing arrangement with China, and consult Bangladesh as a lower riparian.

Tamil Nadu has set up a high-level committee on welfare and public spending. The author argues that its first task is not to cut but to measure: define what the State actually spends and where it is recorded, using international standards such as the IMF’s Government Finance Statistics Manual 2014 (GFSM 2014). Done well, this could become a model for expenditure reform across States.

The State’s own June 2026 White Paper shows a budget that is more rigid and less investment-oriented than those of its main industrial peers: committed claims take up most of the revenue, and capital spending is low.

• 1. Comparable accounts: definitions, classifications and coverage differ across States and between States and the Union. A supplementary GFSM 2014 reconciliation would allow comparison with other States and countries.
• 2. The full cost of subsidies: subsidy reporting is fragmented, and implicit subsidies are left out.
  • Bicycle and seed subsidies were booked as grants-in-aid — ₹802 crore in 2023-24.
  • Working-capital borrowing by the State Civil Supplies Corporation rose from ₹17,500 crore (2021-22) to ₹27,181 crore (2025-26) as unpaid subsidy dues accumulated.
• 3. The “fiscal perimeter” of power: support to electricity comes through many channels:
  • tariff subsidies and below-cost pricing;
  • unpaid dues and utility losses;
  • guarantees and borrowing;
  • capital outlays and net lending.
  Where power is sold below cost for social reasons, the subsidy should be explicit.
• 4. True capital spending: recorded “capital expenditure” includes loans, equity injections and debt repayments that create no physical asset. Spending on roads, water systems, schools and hospitals should be shown separately from these financial transactions.
• 5. The real wage bill: budgeted salaries were about ₹75,500 crore (2023-24 RE), but the publicly financed workforce extends further.
  • Uncounted groups include contractual and scheme workers, aided institutions, local bodies, autonomous bodies and public enterprises.
  • RBI data show municipal-corporation salaries, wages and pensions rising from ₹2,899 crore (2019-20) to ₹3,668 crore.
  • Across States, the author estimates salary spending rises from a reported 2.5% of GDP to about 4.1% once omitted components are added.

Once spending is measured correctly, the author’s next step is to ask what each rupee achieves. Each major programme should be assessed for beneficiaries, unit costs, leakage, duplication and outcomes. Effective schemes should be protected or expanded; ineffective ones redesigned or discontinued.

• Strength: the approach shifts the welfare debate from rhetoric (“freebies” versus “welfare”) to evidence, and from cutting to reallocating spending.
• Caution: some returns on welfare — in nutrition, schooling and women’s workforce participation — take time and are hard to quantify. Narrow cost-benefit tests may undervalue them.
• Capacity: reconciling to GFSM and consolidating the accounts of hundreds of entities requires skilled staff and data systems that most States lack.
• Federal angle: State fiscal space also depends on tax devolution, the end of GST compensation (June 2022) and conditions on borrowing. Expenditure reform is necessary but not sufficient.
• Wider relevance: echoes earlier reform ideas — outcome budgeting (Centre, 2005), the Expenditure Management Commission (2014) and accrual accounting recommended by successive Finance Commissions.

Heat and floods are usually treated as separate problems, yet both are shaped by the same decisions on land, buildings and infrastructure. The authors argue that India’s smaller cities, which are still expanding, have the best chance to build resilience into their growth rather than retrofitting it later.

• Where people live: more than half of India’s urban population lives in cities with fewer than one million residents.
• Still to be built: by estimates the authors cite, over 50% of the housing needed by 2070 has not yet been built.
• Avoiding lock-in: big cities face costly retrofits. Smaller cities can still choose how roads, drainage, buildings and public spaces are laid out — decisions that lock in either high energy use and vulnerability or resilient, resource-efficient neighbourhoods.
• Heat–energy link: a study of 88 Indian cities finds that land use, building density, urban sprawl and green cover shape cooling demand, not just rising temperatures.

• Mainstreaming: climate risk must become part of routine master planning, project appraisal and investment decisions, not a separate add-on.
• Coordination: development authorities, public works departments, utilities and municipalities currently decide separately and need aligned investments.
• Finance: resilience can begin with how existing municipal revenues, transfers and scheme grants are designed. CSR, impact investment and development finance can fund pilots and generate evidence for scaling.
• Evidence plus local knowledge: spatial data, risk and vulnerability assessments and scenario models work best combined with how residents actually walk, commute and use public spaces, rather than copying big-city models.

• Capacity gap: smaller cities have the thinnest planning and engineering staff, weakest own revenues and the least data — the very tools the authors recommend.
• Incomplete devolution: three decades after the 74th Amendment, many Twelfth Schedule functions remain with State parastatals, so the coordination the authors seek requires State-level reform.
• Informal growth: much expansion in smaller towns and peri-urban areas is unplanned, outside master plans and building regulations.
• Opportunity remains real: early planning is far cheaper than retrofitting, which makes the authors’ “window of opportunity” argument persuasive.