So big dams on the Brahmaputra are in fashion again. There is a grandeur in all rivers but the Brahmaputra is awesome. Miles across, it boggles the imagination. It can create islands as big as the Majuli with its silt; it can change its course and tear into them in flood. We planned the Sardar Sarovar to be forty thousand cusecs and that was big — twice the size of any other irrigation canal in the world — but in the Brahmaputra Arunachal tanks they are casual about twice that size.

She is an untamed river. She can change course and cause havoc. The mechanics talk of big dams, the thoughtful ones of first training the river. That will not be easy. You will need extraordinary skills to conceptualise such an effort: hydrology, drainage, mechanics, hardware, civil engineering, and above all integrative skills — for, like we did with ISRO, no one’s been there before. Anyway the final call will be society’s, to make the final determination about man’s intervention on this scale. And anyway here you will also need diplomats, many of whom stopped thinking after Bismarck.

Before our colonial masters created and closed the Inner Line, the Brahmaputra was a river of communication for the areas within our borders, and with China, Myanmar and the east. It can be the strong arm of our civilisation to the East if we have the vision. How will we convince the contractors and the “immediate growth”-wallahs? Tough, but let’s try. The Brahmaputra is too big not to be seen as a whole river. Did you know that in its upper reaches the deforestation is some of the worst in the world? We can’t measure it, for it is outside India, but we know from satellites over Tibet. All that silt comes down to us — and of course also affects Bangladesh.

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