The Kerala model of development a debate (Part 2)

Abstract

Every year hundreds are killed and millions made homeless by floods in the Ganges and Brahmaputra Basins. Every year millions go hungry because of the low productivity of agriculture in the region and the unequal distribution of its benefits. Some thirty percent of the world's poorest 800 million people live in the Basins of the Ganges and Brahmaputra. Their future prosperity depends both on changed agrarian relations and on the development of the resources of the two rivers. While coordinated development of the rivers could increase agricultural productivity and provide enormous quantities of hydroelectricity for the three main countries of the region—India, Nepal and Bangladesh—for the last thirty years such development has been precluded by intergovernmental dispute over the sharing of the Ganges. The conduct of the dispute is frequently determined by the immediate political needs of the factions in power in India and Bangladesh. As long as that remains the case, proposals for the regulation and development of the Ganges and Brahmaputra are likely to stagnate.