What do electricity access programmes do for internally displaced populations in North East India?

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Sept. 30, 2021

May 31, 2025

India currently carries one of the highest rates of internal displacement worldwide, as a result of natural disasters, climate change and, now, COVID-19. Displacement events have come to disproportionately affect the north-east of India, along the banks of the Brahmaputra river, where the combined effects of flooding, riverbank erosion and COVID-19 are having severe social and economic impact. Projections of future changes in surface temperature, humidity and rainfall are likely to exacerbate these challenges, increasing rates of displacement in this part of the country. As state and non-state agencies address these challenges, much emphasis has been placed on ensuring that internally displaced people have access to electricity, raising multiple questions about the politics and impacts of these efforts. Against this backdrop, programmes aimed at increasing access to electricity produce unequal outcomes; with populations in low-lying areas like flood-plains -- often most vulnerable to internal displacement -- remaining unconnected and disenfranchised.

Access to reliable, affordable, and safe electricity supply and associated services is still a challenge for many households in India, even with claims of universal electrification in the country. I wish to conduct an ethnographic study along the banks of the Brahmaputra river in the state of Assam. Given the topography of the region and its unique climatic and socio-cultural complexities, electricity access for inhabitants in these districts is becoming an issue of increased importance. Places that remain most vulnerable to flooding-induced displacement, especially low-lying sandbars (or Chars), remain unconnected to the electricity grid and recently have been seeing a proliferation of solar powered electrical equipment through state government schemes and the installation of micro-grids.

This PhD project aims to examine the socio-political impact of efforts to improve the lives of those most vulnerable to forced displacement as a result of natural disasters and climate change, through a specific focus on energy access. My research questions address the quest for re-enfranchisement and access to infrastructure for populations at the edge of the grid. I wish to situate my research within the context of energy democracy, examining the kind of 'public' electricity services produce and to add to the existing literature by focusing on three particular aspects -- the role of tariffs and subsidies in increasing the affordability of electricity supply; the impact of electricity metering schemes on affordability, calculability and marketisation; and the forms of community-based collective action emerging to demand better access to energy.

Over the coming decade, as local and central administrations, researchers, and civil society focus their attention on provision of electricity access for all, they will have to address the additional challenges, such as displacement, that arise due to climate variability. This thesis will not only inform such participants, but will also contribute to academic debate about the justice implications of energy access for displaced populations in northeast India and the efforts to ensure sustained electricity supply -- particularly acting within anthropological and development studies discourses.