Kaliganga I- 4 MW Run of River Small Hydro Plant, District Rudraprayag, Uttarakhand, India. One can see, against the backdrop of Snow clad Himalayas, the power house along with penstock and pedestrian access road leading to power plant.

Project affected families (Village Jaltalla and Kotma) content with the compensation provided in terms of employment to their son's or to their husbands in lieu of agriculture land, but are worried over the nature of job whether it is temporary or will be permanent. If temporary, they risk losing their livelihood but if it is permanent than they will be glad that the project happened, since a regular source of income is assured when compared to erratic farming produce.

A positive dimension of the project is through 'unskilled' employment generation given to people of local villages under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MNREGA) for making check dams, cement concrete roads and other miscellaneous construction activities. Working as laborers is a major employment opportunities for most of the villagers as agriculture is only able to suffice food requirement for 10-30 days in a year, depending on agriculture land holding.

Diversion Weir Trench type without reservoir safeguarding against various issues associated with reservoir construction like submergence of huge land areas, GHG emissions from reservoirs among others typically associated with large hydro projects. But provisions like fish passages and regulation on minimum environmental flows would have mitigated negative ecological impacts of the project.

Desiliting Tank situated after the intake tank and before water enters into the tunnel, is used to remove silt lesser than 0.5 mm in diameter using the concept of settling velocity of a particle. This is a crucial component for effective working of turbines. Typically, for a 10-15 day period during monsoons every year huge amount of silt comes down streams.

Head Race Tunnel (D Shape) for water transmission from Desiliting tank to Forebay. In case of Kaliganga- I the length of tunnel is 399.5 meters and for Kaliganga - II (6 MW capacity)- the tunnel length is 2002 meters. Although technology advancement facilitates this methodology of water transmission against the earlier open channel based which was always at risk of being broken and losing on generation for months whenever landslides occurred, tunneling has its own implications on environment from muck disposal to affecting landslides in the fragile geology of this young mountain range.

Muck disposal at the end of an Adit for Kaliganga-II ( this is a passage created in between the tunnel leading from Desiliting tank to Forebay with twin objective of increasing the speed of tunneling and act as bypass in case of an issue with main tunnel). Hoping that most of the fine grained rock to be utilized in building roads and coarser rocks in construction work like check dams, building structure among others to save the ecological impact on river water quality thereby other flora and fauna.

Forebay tank designed to have a volume of water sufficient enough to power the turbines for two minutes of working safeguarding the turbines against breakdown occurring due to sudden drop of water level.

Penstock -275 meters in length- supported by saddle block and anchors located between the Forebay and Turbine power house defines the head, one of the two key parameters influencing the capacity of the power plant other being the volume flow of water.

Power House and Switch Yard feeding the electricity generated to the nearest substation 24 km away, bypassing the local feeder which has been powering, although erratically, the five villages around the power plant for around 25 years now. This leaves with a legitimized resentment amongst the villagers of not getting the basic facility "right" to the produce "electricity" of local resource harnessed. This clearly defy a major component claimed by Asian Development bank - which has provided debt funding - that the project shall lead to local community economic development due to availability of electricity.

Water flowing out of the tail race and bypass stretch, which would stop flowing once the Kaliganga-II power plants is completed, as the exit of Kaliganga-I will lead directly to the tunnel of Kaliganga-II. Approximate river length affected will be around one kilometer due to Kaliganga-I and around two kilometers due to Kaliganga-II power plant.

People, women in particular, feel if they have regular electricity and more means of economic upliftment then they can be saved of drudgery. Like this woman has an aspiration of buying a mixer to save her from manual labor and time it takes presently in milling of spices.