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When India's dam planners visualize the big dam future, this is what they see: endless fields of grain. Here, farmers fertilize a wheat crop in Punjab, a breadbasket state in northern India that profited heavily from irrigation provided by the world's highest gravity-driven dam, Bhakra. Jawaharlal Nehru proclaimed Bhakra, completed in 1961, a "temple of modern India." Forty-two years later, that faith still stands strong. India's grain production quadrupled between 1951 and 1997, according to the Indian Planning Commission -- irrigation provided by mega-dams is cited as the cause. To keep the country's growing population in wheat and rice, more large dams are required, the thinking goes. The World Commission on Dams differs. In a 2000 report, the international body found that large dams contribute to less than 10 percent of India's overall grain production.
Photo: Dipak Kumar/Reuters
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