Late last year, the Teesta III dam in Sikkim was washed away.
Initial blame for the catastrophe was laid on a nearby glacial lake. But, swiftly, that tale got more complicated. The environment ministry — and the dam-builder — had ignored warnings about glacial lakes. Thereafter, the state government had failed to erect early warning systems, not to mention other systems to monitor the dam’s operational health — or even to monitor it during construction.
Even this, however, is not the complete list of causal factors. There is also the curious history of Athena Power, which built Teesta III, and the political economy of dam-building in India. For more on these, click here (Part One) and here (Part Two).
PS: With this, all the stories I wrote in 2023 have been published. We have, in terms of relatively investigative pieces, Jet, NCLT, Adani Ports, Nuclear, Oil Palm, Tellurian and Teesta. Apart from these, there are a series on Critical Minerals, a report on MFIs, another on Silkyara and what it tells us about environmental governance in India, and three on Adani and Hindenburg. Now to see what 2024 is like.
Fractured/Earth 
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