Raja Ashraf has informed the parliament that 32 small and medium sized dams will be built in the next five years from which hydropower will also be generated. We need a totally technical and ruthlessly impartial expert to tell us whether or not cheap hydropower can be generated from small and medium-sized dams. The shelving of Kalabagh dam must also be dispassionately and vigorously debated as people everywhere are rioting against absence of electricity. I fear they will be rioting again when fossil fuel-based power projects start supplying electricity as their power will be quite beyond the people's capacity to pay. -SALMAN YUNUS, Lahore, via e-mail, August 4.