Social impacts
NHPC is also constructing one large dam on the Teesta river in Sikkim, Northeast India and is planning to build several more on this river. The dams would destroy the Dzongu region, an area where a small ethnic minority, the Lepcha, have lived for thousands of years. The Lepcha, a people of no more than 6,000 individuals, are opposed to the construction of dams on their river as their livelihoods and their culture would be destroyed. Already in 2007 and 2008, during the construction of Teesta V, the Lepcha have suffered from the building of the dam, as the houses alongside the river developed cracks and orchards were destroyed.

Other issues
In projects like the Indira Sagar and Omkareshwar dam, NHPC has unleashed a regime of terror, forcing people to leave their villages through intimidation, threats and the use of armed forces.
In several cases, it has not even given warning prior to flooding, so that villagers were forced to run for their lives. NHPC has destroyed pristine natural areas and ruinied the economies of populations living downstream of its projects.
In effect, its activities have turned hundreds of thousands of self-sufficient farmers into paupers and beggars. Most recently, NHPC has also embarked on projects outside of India and it is currently cooperating with Burma's military regime to build the Tamanthi Dam, which will displace over 30,000 tribal people.