Yoginder K Alagh There has always been a question mark against the Tehri dam project. It was planned with Soviet assistance and they had a yen for huge electric projects since the days Vladimir Lenin produced the Gelro electrification plan. If mountains came in the way, they would be blasted. Rivers had to be tamed and so it went on. Mikhail Gorbachev was to admit that bad policies had led to irrigation growth becoming negative. I am supposed to be a big dam man since I planned Sardar Sarovar. I am not. I support good projects that need careful work. The benefits have to be carefully worked out, not on paper but assuming normal behaviour by normal peasants. Soils have to be analysed to see if they will sustain the water and drainage has to be modelled and provided for. Not an acre of land should be allowed to waterlog. Above all, the fewest possible people should be displaced. They should be looked after not by irrigation engineers who are not good at it, but by professionals supervised by mentors. The planning of Sardar Sarovar Project met all these tests and so I supported it. I chaired a civil society group and argued against the Ken Betwa Link Project because its own data showed that more than two-thirds of the soil was unsuitable for deep irrigation even as it provided for 60% irrigation of rice. I have seen flood irrigation damage the black soils of Malwa. When the concern was raised by Indira Gandhi, I vowed to stop it if I could. In the 1990s, Tehri was an enigma to me. I got suspicious because the design and location of the dam was changed more than once and the target of irrigation remained the same. This is strange and can only happen under very unusual circumstances. I later found out that the hydrology and seismicity of the project were done badly and there really wasn