Hype and Hydro (and, at Last, Some Hope) in the Himalaya

Abstract

Nepal’s barons of hydro-policy have long promised a bonanza from the waters cascading down the Himalaya, if and when developed into electricity from high dams and exported to India. Water, and hydroelectric potential in particular, is described in many a ministerial speech as the country’s ‘only resource’: a resource, moreover, of such magnitude that Nepal is ‘second in the world in hydropower potential’.¹ Any hype should be viewed with suspicion, this one especially, since no other country has yet come forward saying it is number one.