Himalayas. Orogeny and Topography

Himalaya means "realm of snow." The Himalayas are a vast bow of mountains reaching from the Indian state of Arunachel Pradesh, north of Burma, to Kashmir. The total length of the system is about 2,500 kilometers, the width about 250 kilometers.

Orogeny and Topography. The Himalayas arise from a collision between two continental plates. The South Asian plate, coming from the south, is driving under and lifting the Asian plate. This in turn scrapes and folds the South Asian plate surface to form the mountains. Reflecting this orogeny, the Himalayan topography from the Indo-Gangetic plain to the highlands of Tibet falls into three main bands: the foothill formations, the lesser Himalayas, and the Great Himalaya.

The main foothill formations are the Siwaliks and the Terai. The Siwaliks are low hills with semiarid brush. The Terai is a zone of rough and often swampy land generally in front of the Siwaliks. The Terai is generally densely forested and was considered uncultivable until it was opened up in Uttar Pradesh and Nepal the 1950s.

Behind the foothill formations, the first ranges of the lesser Himalayas rise abruptly to 2,100 to 2,400 meters. The peaks of the spine of the Great Himalaya rise to more than 8,000 meters. After this, except in Kashmir, the elevation drops steeply to the Tibetan plateau at about 4,000 meters. In Kashmir, the Great Himalayan ranges are backed by more high valleys and a still higher range, the Karakoram. The general parallelism is interrupted by ridges that extend out laterally from the main spine and rivers that break through to the South Asian plains.

The system is divided lengthwise into the Western, Central, and Eastern Himalayas. The Western Himalayas drain into the Indus and the Central Himalayas into the Ganges. The Eastern Himalayas, beginning at about the Kali Gandaki River in central Nepal, hold many of the highest peaks in the chain, receive the greatest rainfall and snowfall, hold the largest glaciers, and on their lower elevations, are covered by the greatest extent of dense subtropical forest.

Ecologies. The topography shapes the human ecologies by shaping the human physical environment, and also through its global and local effects on the weather. Globally, interaction between the westerly jet stream and the Himalayan heights is a main cause of the monsoon pattern of climate itself. Locally, given this pattern, the mountains steer and direct its rains.

The Eastern Himalayas, facing the Bay of Bengal, receive up to 11 meters a year in the mountains, with generally over 1.25 meters on the plains below them. From here the waterbearing winds follow the mountains inland, falling most heavily on the southern slopes and in, in a narrowing plume, on the plains immediately in front of them.

The human response to the weather and topography has been to make virtually every valley the home of a relatively autonomous and self-sustaining community with a distinctive cultural character, always pluralistic but varying from a dominantly Indie style overall on the Indian side of the range to a Tibetan style on the Tibetan side. Historic political divisions follow cultural divisions.

Culture and Cultural Ecology. The self-sustaining character of local Himalayan communities reflects certain widespread adaptive strategies. As one proceeds upward in elevation from foothill formations to the highest valleys, the climate runs from tropical lowland to arctic desert, but the basic system of agriculture and allied occupations is the same throughout. At the base, the main contrast with the plains is that the fields are always terraced and irrigated, usually by diversion from small streams.

There are two cropping seasons. In most places the historic summer crop has been rice, along with sugar cane, millet, pulses, and vegetables. Since the land around a mountain village is never wholly cultivable, cropping is supplemented by grazing and gathering. The winter crop is most often rice again in the southern parts of the range, or wheat in the north, again with vegetables and pulses. Important fruit trees are mango and banana.

At higher elevations the terraces and irrigation remain the same but the crops change. At about 2,600 meters, the summer becomes too cold and rice is replaced by wheat. At elevations where the winter involves freezes, mangoes and bananas are replaced by fruit trees with a chilling requirement. Other crops depend on the growing season. Still higher, above 3,000 meters, the crops may be only barley, millet, and peas in summer accompanied by fruit trees, particularly apricot.

There are also local specialties. Willow and poplar are major tree crops in the vale of Kashmir (2,400 meters), used for making cricket bats. Deodar cedar is cut commercially in the Western and Central Himalayas, and deciduous hardwoods in the more humid eastern Himalayas. Fishing is important in the rivers and lakes.

Throughout the western and central sections, agriculture is complemented by transhumant herding by specialized nomadic groups. Some herd goats and sheep, others herd goats and buffaloes. Others, at the highest elevations, herd mainly yaks. Distinctive Himalayan animals include the goats that produce extraordinarily fine wool and cows and buffaloes that stand barely waist high to a man.

In the Eastern Himalayas heavy forests preclude transhumance. Social organization and social identification is often tribal and forest-based subsistence systems still include swidden agriculture.

Poverty and Development. Himalayan adaptations provide sustainable subsistence under difficult conditions, but very little cash. Wages in the region are low and there is little opportunity to break out of traditional occupations. The main development efforts have focused on industrialization, lumbering, agriculture and tourism. Benefits have accrued mainly to the governments and well-funded businessmen from outside the area.

Costs have been increasing pollution and marked decreases of forest, resulting in increased runoff, siltation of rivers, and probably landslides. The main causes lie in the highly centralized and remote administrative structures of the Indian and Nepalese central governments and the lack of effective enforcement of the environmental protection laws.

The main exception has been in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh, which has made the state a major producer of temperate fruits and other cold-adapted crops. The new Indian state of Arunachel Pradesh, broken off from the much larger plains-based state of Uttar Pradesh, promises to follow Himachal's example.

The idea that successful development must incorporate local knowledge and be adapted to local institutions is now well established in programs focused on intensive agriculture elsewhere in South Asia, but in the Himalayan region it is mainly confined to the Himachal Pradesh agricultural programs and a few new programs in "community forestry.”