India clears big hydro plant

India just signed off on a dam big enough to power a mid-sized state and expensive enough to rank with India’s largest public infrastructure bets: the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved ₹26,069.50 crore for the 1,720 megawatt Kamala Hydro Electric Project on April 8, 2026. The project will sit in Kamle, Kra Daadi, and Kurung Kumey districts of Arunachal Pradesh in India’s far northeast. (pib.gov.in) This is not only a power plant. The government cleared Kamala as a storage hydro project, which means it uses a reservoir like a giant water battery and also includes a flood-moderation role, so the same structure is being asked to steady electricity supply and hold back part of a flood surge. (pib.gov.in) The scale is unusually large even by hydro standards. Kamala’s approved design is 1,720 megawatts, and reports on the approval say that capacity is split across eight 210 megawatt units and one 40 megawatt unit. (onmanorama.com) The project is in Arunachal Pradesh because that state holds India’s biggest untapped large-hydro prize. A Central Electricity Authority reassessment put Arunachal Pradesh’s identified large hydropower potential at 50,394 megawatts out of India’s 133,410 megawatts total, which is more than one-third of the national total in one mountain state. (pib.gov.in) Those mountains are also the reason these projects are slow and costly. The power ministry says hydro sites are often remote, hilly, and short on roads, bridges, transmission links, and communications, which is why the Union Cabinet expanded a separate ₹12,461 crore support scheme in September 2024 to help pay for exactly that enabling infrastructure. (pib.gov.in) Flood control is not a decorative add-on in this part of India. The Central Electricity Authority said in 2023 that floods regularly damage temporary dam works, roads, and bridges at hydro sites, and monsoon flooding in Arunachal Pradesh in late May and early June 2025 killed at least 10 people and disrupted infrastructure across multiple districts. (pib.gov.in) (economictimes.indiatimes.com) That helps explain why New Delhi cleared two Arunachal projects together on the same day. Alongside Kamala, the cabinet also approved the 1,200 megawatt Kalai-II Hydro Electric Project with a ₹14,105.83 crore outlay, taking the combined April 8 package to a little over ₹40,175 crore. (pib.gov.in 1) (pib.gov.in 2) India has been laying policy track for this for several years. In March 2019, the cabinet reclassified large hydropower projects above 25 megawatts as renewable energy and added budget support for flood moderation and project access works, making projects like Kamala easier to justify in the power system and easier to finance. (pib.gov.in) The developer matters too. National Hydroelectric Power Corporation, the state-run hydro company better known as National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Limited, announced the Kamala approval on April 8, 2026, which signals that this is being pushed as a public-sector build rather than left to private developers in one of India’s hardest construction zones. (nhpcindia.com) So the approval is doing three jobs at once. It adds 1,720 megawatts of renewable generation, buys water storage in a flood-prone mountain basin, and shows that India is still willing to use the central state balance sheet for very large dams when the project also solves grid and climate problems in the same place. (pib.gov.in 1) (pib.gov.in 2)