Most hill people in India and in the mountain kingdoms of Bhutan and Nepal do not see their hydrological nexus with the plains below as symbiotic. This is because in the past the plains have been predatory and the hill people have rightfully felt robbed. In siting projects and allocating the benefits, the authorities have paid insufficient attention to the' interests of the hill areas and populations.
Immense harm has been done to the Himalayan ecology, some of it by the short-sighted exploitation of resources for the sake of the plains. Hills and valleys which have served local needs as well as those of the plains for decades are now in danger of being able to serve neither. They have been badly gouged for meeting immediate local needs for fuel, fodder and food, and by the rash construction of dams.
The answer is to insist on strict implementation of a forward-looking principle, that there be a fair sharing of any project between the upstream and downstream areas and populations. While recent studies have rightly exposed the damage done to the hills for the short-term profit of the plains, many have ignored those strategies by which the natural nexus between the hills and plains can be truly developed for the benefit of both.
There are those who balk at treating the hills and the plains as a single ecological system. They favour India's treating the hills as a self-contained and self-sufficient universe to be developed for meeting the needs of the local people. They would admit to two types of tradeoff: the plains should meet a part of the food needs of the hills to help reduce the. pressure of cultivaton in the highlands; and the hilts should be cultivated in such a way that they do not add to the load of silt in the plains. But this under-estimates the scope for much bigger and mutually beneficial tradeoffs, particularly in relation to water and gravity. This brings us to the subject of power projects and the hill-plain nexus.