Indigenous women in Tanahun have formed an advocacy group—Masto Lafa Bheja (literally, ‘women’s friends group’ in Magar language)—on behalf of their community, which will likely be forced to relocate due to the Tanahu Hydropower Project’s plan to build a 140-metre tall dam that will submerge their land.

Uma Sara Magar, the group’s secretary who lives in the district’s Paltyang village, says she is not against the infrastructure project in itself but is concerned about how relocating will affect her community.

“On one hand, the project is a development initiative but on the other, it will displace us from the area where we have been living since our great great grandparents’ time,” Magar said. “Now I feel conflicted about which one is better.”

Arzoo Rana—programme coordinator of Indigenous Women’s Legal Awareness Group (INOWLAG), an NGO that provides legal support to indigenous women—understands Magar’s confusion.

“They’ve been living on that land for generations,” Rana said. “So there are so many intangible things that will not be compensated by money.”

The awareness group has been helping local women negotiate with the project management for the past seven years.

The Nepal Electricity Authority initiated the Tanahu Hydropower Project in 2009 by submitting an initial environmental impact assessment to the Nepal government. Tanahu Hydropower Limited (THL)—a subsidiary company of the Nepal Electricity Authority that is leading the project—estimates that the $505 million project will produce 585.7 GWh of energy annually. The project has faced many setbacks, though the company plans to complete the project by June 2026.

Nepal is one of only 23 countries that have endorsed the International Labour Organization’s Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention No. 169, which states, “Where the relocation of these peoples is considered necessary as an exceptional measure, such relocation shall take place only with their free and informed consent.”

Rana said the fact that the Nepal government has agreed to this international instrument gives the community leverage to have their voices heard and ask for their rights. “[The indigenous community] has a right to say yes or no to the project, depending on how the project is going to have an impact on their daily lives,” Rana told the Post.

Community leaders say that they were given no advanced notice of the project. Therefore, in February of 2020, the community filed a complaint through the Asian Development Bank’s Accountability Mechanism and the European Investment Bank’s Complaints Mechanism. The Asian Development Bank and the European Investment Bank are providing $150 million and $80 million, respectively, for the project.

Compensation negotiations with the people who live in Damauli and whose land will be submerged after the dam’s construction have stalled the project. The Nepal Electricity Authority’s 2018 Resettlement and Indigenous Peoples Plan identified 547 affected households—a total of 3,919 people—that they expected to lose land, structures, or trees, as a result of the project, making these households eligible for compensation.

In 2017, the project distributed Rs330 million to 162 landowners. However, an Independent Land Valuation Survey Report of 2021, initiated by the Asian Development Bank’s Office of the Special Project Facilitator, estimated the value of the land to be higher than THL’s initial estimation. The report estimated that registered, fertile lands should be compensated at a rate of Rs1,822,500 per ropani (0.0509 hectares), though it stated that the valuation can vary up to 50 percent depending on the land parcel.

The same report states that the project should compensate unregistered land at a rate of Rs17,000 per ropani, and the project should compensate unregistered common lands—government-owned land that community members use for grazing, fodder collection, and minor forest produce—by providing alternative government-owned land for these purposes, in compliance with Asian Development Bank policy.

Currently, only 13 households have yet to accept the compensation amount, according to INOWLAG. They are holding out because they want not just money from the government, but also land, so that they can move elsewhere together and maintain their collective identity as an indigenous community.

It is with this goal that Masto Lafa Bheja was formed in 2022—to negotiate a land-for-land deal with the project.

Giving up their land will uproot the lives of the indigenous people because of their historical connection to Damauli and the generational knowledge of the land that the group has acquired.

“The indigenous community is entirely dependent on the natural resources, and they have a very symbiotic relationship with nature,” Rana said. “The land, the water and the natural resources are their livelihood.”

If each household takes the compensation money and relocates to different places in Nepal, the community will lose not just its land but also its collective identity.

“Members of this indigenous community live together because their lives and their language are interconnected,” Rana said. “If they are dispersed as individual families to different places of the country, then their identity as an indigenous community, their language, and their culture will also vanish gradually.”

And this shared identity is what Masto Lafa Bheja wants to preserve and for that, it wants the project to provide new land in return for the land that will be inundated by water after the dam’s construction.

“They're saying, ‘If we move, we want to move as a community. Give us a place where we will live together as we've been living,’” Rana said.

The community members have identified nearby government land to which they could relocate; the project, however, has not provided this land as compensation.

INOWLAG has also given the roughly 20 women of Masto Lafa Bheja training in financial literacy, legal awareness, and women’s rights. They hope that if these women and their families do relocate, they will be able to move equipped with new skills of business and entrepreneurship.

“We are trying to empower them in that manner,” Rana said.

Over the past seven years, Rana has seen more women getting involved in the negotiations.

“Previously, it was mostly just the men negotiating—the women used to just sit there and be a part of the group,” Rana said. “Now they are participating and having meaningful conversations.”

Masto Lafa Bheja has recently secured funding from donors independent of INOWLAG to invest in their capacity and leadership.

INOWLAG hopes that Masto Lafa Bheja will continue to advocate for themselves and their community’s rights.

“That’s what we want to see from them: having an opinion, asking questions,” Rana said. “It’s amazing to see them grow and become more confident.”