2006 Volume 10 Issue 1 Pages 63-72
This paper is based on experience gained and observations made throughout the greater Himalayan region while the author worked as coordinator of a United Nations University (UNU) research project. Research began in 1978 in northern Thailand and Nepal. Later it extended to Yunnan, southwest China, Tibet, and Tajikistan and included reconnaissance visits to Darjeeling, the Central Indian Himalaya, and northern Pakistan. The extensive travel and long periods in the field, along with colleagues and graduate students, facilitated many contacts with mountain minority peoples as well as the frequently large-scale aid and development projects sponsored by national and international agencies. While many ‘aid’ projects, especially the smaller, carefully focused ones, were beneficial to the poor mountain people, many were insensitive, even inimical. Competition between aid agencies, imposition of ‘Western’ assumptions and methods, and corruption at many levels appear to have been, at least partly, responsible for the widening gap between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’ and for the pursuit of solutions to non-existent problems. The latter is characterized by the ‘Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation.’ Several examples are introduced to facilitate examination of these claims.
The growth in social and political unrest and actual insurgency across much of the region cannot be entirely divorced from the failure to effectively address mountain poverty and unequal access to resources. The paper concludes with a call for a comprehensive review of development policy with adequate representation afforded the so-called ‘target’ peoples.
