Call it what you like, but I find that the moment I hear about a massive project -- like the proposed interlinking of rivers -- I am suspicious. Cynical. I have a friend who berates me for this. He tells me that nations, and indeed all organisations, need occasional BHAGs. That's "bee-hag", a term invented by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their 1995 bestseller, Built to Last. It stands for Big Hairy Audacious Goal.

Like the river-linking project.

I see my friend's point. But I remain cynical about river-linking nevertheless, and I've been asking myself why. I think in the end it comes down to one thing: the past record of governments gives me no confidence in their plans, or BHAGs, for the future.

I'll return to river-linking shortly. Meanwhile, it seems others look at this business of past records a little differently.

A recent editorial in The Economic Times (May 16) addressed the decision to raise the height of the Sardar Sarovar dam from 95 to 100 metres, taken after the Narmada Control Authority gave its clearance for this 5m increase. That clearance came after the Maharashtra government promised the NCA "that it would complete the mandatory resettlement of those whose lands are likely to be submerged before the monsoon".

ET notes that the decision to raise the height has "evoked a predictable protest from the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA)." This protest, the editorial continues, "is [clearly] based on the poor track record on rehabilitation and the assumption that any promises given by state governments cannot be taken seriously."

With me so far? Past record, remember? Note that the editorial itself mentions the government's "poor track record" on rehabilitation, and how that makes it difficult to believe new promises.

Yet the next sentence in the editorial is an odd one indeed. "This" -- meaning the NBA's protest -- "is too rigid a position."

Really? For years, you watch the government put together a pitiful record of rehabilitating displaced people. You listen to promise after promise that it never fulfils. These things -- the pitiful record, the broken promises -- are not your lonely opinion about the way government works.

They are widely acknowledged. Even, in this very editorial, by The Economic Times itself. Yet, when the government makes one more promise, and you suspect this is another that will never be fulfilled, ET will damn you for being "too rigid".

I wonder: what, for ET, would not be too rigid a position?

After all, opposition to this dam, or indeed to other projects, is based on the government's poor performance on various counts. If the builders of the dam had carried out various tasks efficiently and sincerely, if governments were known to come through on their promises, there would not have been protests in the first place.

I mean, one reason I'm sceptical that governments will build a dam, or anything, properly, occurs to me when I look at almost any road in my city. So poor is the surface, so half-hearted the carting away of stones and rubble, so vulnerable is it to the first monsoon showers, so sordid the conditions in which the migrant labourers building it live and work, and so long have I seen such shabbiness persist -- that I simply cannot believe any new road will turn out anything but shabby. I long to be proved wrong, but that remains my automatic reaction.

Is this "too rigid a position"?

Let's say the public-sector phone company, MTNL, gives me a new phone line tomorrow, assuring me it won't go blink in the rains. Remembering the last several monsoons when, despite similar promises, my existing MTNL line died with the first showers, I laugh at this claim. I long for reliable phones, but that laugh is how I react by default.

Am I taking "too rigid a position"?

Belabouring the point. I know. Maybe it needs belabouring. The reason people distrust any major government project -- dam, highway, power plant, linking rivers -- is the way governments have pursued such projects in the past. Without any other input, and until there's proof -- not promises, but proof -- of a change for the better, the purely natural thing is to hold on to the distrust.

BHAGs notwithstanding.

So consider just a few of many questions, off the top of my head, that come to mind when I hear about the river-linking project. Remember that questions like these got no satisfactory answers in other large projects. That is why they arise now.

Question 1: Precisely what is the problem for which linking up our rivers is the solution? In Hyderabad on May 28, Suresh Prabhu, chairman of the task force that is implementing the project, said that it "would lead to creating employment, power generation, economic growth and elimination of poverty" (The Indian Express). Other things often mentioned are floods in
water-surplus areas, droughts elsewhere, falling food production, and irrigation.

Fine aims. Any one of all these, by itself, might be reason enough for this gigantic effort; all of them, thus, even more so.

So I'm hardly arguing that these are not serious problems. I'm remarking on the way the river-linking project has suddenly leaped into the spotlight. That didn't happen because of these problems -- they have been around for decades -- but because a Justice of the Supreme Court made an observation, in a different context, about linking rivers. Does such an observation,
even from the Supreme Court, amount to the normal -- or what we might think of as normal -- process of identifying a problem and working out the best solution to that problem?

Which of course leads directly to...

Question 2: Is it clear that linking rivers is the best solution to the problems it is claimed to solve? That Rs 5.6 trillion (yes, Rs 5,600,000,000,000) is best spent this way in addressing these problems? Or was this just assumed and then stated to be the case?

That is, if we are told linking rivers will reduce or eliminate floods, say, who are the experts who have studied the pattern of flooding and come to this conclusion? Where are their studies and reports? What were the other possible solutions they considered before deciding this one is best? How do they answer those who suggest, for example, that we cannot really control floods; that instead, we have to learn to live with them and ensure that they cause as little damage as possible? (This is not loose talk. A galaxy of scholars and ex-government officials, including ex-secretaries in the water resources and rural development ministries, have written a detailed memo to the prime minister in which they make just this point. This view of floods, they say, has "almost become conventional wisdom".)

Why must question 2 be asked? Because the way this project is going, it seems it's been decided that rivers must be linked, period. After all, Suresh Prabhu's task force is charged with the "modalities of implementing" the project, and that on a "war-footing". Not with the prior steps: spell out the problems, identify the possible solutions, evaluate them and then decide how to proceed.

It may certainly turn out that linking rivers is the best way to proceed. But where is the effort to persuade us that it is? Or is the sheer audaciousness of the idea, given the starry eyes it will no doubt generate, assumed to be persuasion enough?

Which leads to my last question for today...

Question 3: This time, may we have some transparency? In essence, this is the demand of those who criticise Sardar Sarovar, or Enron, or other such major projects; it is the demand of those who are less than starry-eyed about linking our rivers. Tell us what is going on. Don't take decisions without explaining their rationale thoroughly. Do the requisite studies and release their reports for public consumption. Take us into confidence.

Now you may disagree about Sardar Sarovar. But certainly in the case of the now dead Enron, we know the criticism was right in every respect. What would have happened had we listened, instead of dismissing the critics as "anti-development" nuts, much as critics of linking rivers are already being labelled? We would not have had a white elephant of a "power plant" disfiguring the Konkan coast, rusting while its builder crumbles in shame and scandal, while the rest of us scrabble to find some way to use the beast.

Thing is, it's experiences like Enron that raise questions today about linking rivers. Past record, remember? But this time, it won't happen as those previous projects did. This time, we want answers. Every step of the way.

And BHAGs? Sure, there's a romance, an allure, a purpose, to them. In this case, we already have people saying the river-linking project -- the sheer scale and ambition of it -- will "take India to developed country status by 2010" (from a letter someone sent me), turn us into the world's newest superpower.

Good news. Yet I'm wondering: what makes a superpower? BHAGs by themselves? Or plans made conscientiously, thoroughly, sincerely, and then seen to fruition? I honestly don't know. What I do know is that white elephant on the Konkan coast.

Note: If you'd like a copy of the memo to the prime minister I mention above, write to the co-ordinator, Centre for Equity Studies, C-17A Munirka, New Delhi 110067.

You can send your comments to me at dilipd@rediff.co.in