Rural development in the Himalayas: problems and prospects

This is a collection of 29 papers on various aspects of Himalayan environment, economy, and society. Except for three of the papers which relate to Nepal, all the others are about Himalayan India. Most of the papers are descriptive and based on aggregate data. Section (1) comprises five papers which give a descriptive account of the ecological characteristics of Nepal, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Manipur, and Dun country. Section (2) includes seven papers relating to lake ecosystems, forestry, agriculture, animal husbandry, horticulture, population and integrated agricultural development. Section (3) consists of six papers dealing with topics such as pastoral management of waste lands, road induced landslides, soil erosion problems, forest management, social forestry, and erosion intensity and land use in a watershed. Section (4) consists of eight papers, the first four dealing with the spatial organization of the economy in various parts of the Indian Himalayas, followed by one concerned with recent political developments in Nepal. The last section contains three papers, including one by P.C. Joshi which analyzes the way in which the same problems are perceived differently by the bureaucrats and the ordinary villagers of the U.P. hills, and contends that a better planning process would be to bring the people close to the planners and the planners close to the people.