India. Climate and Geography. Demographic Expansion and Economic Growth

India is a country whose environment is a study in contrasts. Environmental issues, especially those of forest access, air quality, and the use of water, are keenly contested in a deeply unequal society with a vibrant democracy. Questions of livelihood loom large because more than 33 percent of India's 1 billion people are poor, only 57 percent of adults are literate, and 50 percent of the children are malnourished. Urban middle class groups similar to those in developed countries at times sharply differ with the agendas of empowerment, the livelihood based agendas of the poor.

The latter include 6 million coastal fishers, 80 million Scheduled Tribals (indigenous groups who are eligible for positive discrimination under India's Constitution), and others who rely on forest resources. Displacement by development projects is a major public issue.

The legacies of British colonial rule until 1947 and the subsequent model of development are central forces in reshaping the environment. The voter turnout in state and federal elections averages over 60 percent; over 3 million representatives hold office at local, state, and federal levels. But India's people are divided by deep disparities of income, economic opportunity, and privilege.

Livelihood in rural settlements, which account for 73 percent of the population, is still heavily reliant on use of land, water, and biomass (the amount of living matter). Conversely, India has been a nuclear- capable country since 1974 and has the third-largest pool of scientific and technical labor power in the world. By 2001 the Indian life span had risen to sixty- four years (from twenty-seven in 1951), but issues of the quality of life and sustainability are more contentious than ever.

Climate and Geography. India has four times the population of the United States on one-third the land area. One-half the land of India is arable (suitable for irrigation). Major regions include the Indo-Gangetic Plain, the Himalaya Mountains, the peninsula, and the Northeast, which borders on Myanmar. The floodplains of the Indus, Ganges, and Brahmaputra Rivers make up one of Asia's largest expanses of lowland river plains.

To the north the geologically young Himalayas stretch from west to east. In addition to the sediment that has formed the plains, the Himalayas have other critical consequences. They moderate the cold winds from the Tibetan Plateau; they block the clouds brought in by the southwest monsoon from the Bay of Bengal in the east. The subcontinent is drier to the west, but the pattern does not always hold true. The Western Ghat Mountains, which run parallel to the western coast, form a barrier to the monsoon clouds coming in from the Arabian Sea.

There are significant contrasts between the north and the south. All regions have a well-defined rainy season, the monsoon (from the Arabic mausam, meaning "season"). Northern rivers are perennial, fed by the snows of the Himalayas ("the abode of snow"; him = snow,alaya = home). Southern rivers, including the Kaveri, Tambrapani, Mahanadi, Godavari, and Krishna, are seasonal, not perennial.

The plains and river valleys in the south and peninsula are also less extensive, with no vast expanse that can compare to that of the Indo-Gangetic Plain. The peninsula, lying south of the Vindhya hills, is marked by undulating ground. There are several smaller ranges of mountains and hills—the Ashambu, the Cardamoms, and the Eastern Ghats; much of the peninsula, especially the Deccan Plateau, is composed of older basalt and granite crops.

The Thar Desert lies at the end of the range of the monsoon winds in the Northwest. The Ladahk desert in the Ladakh Plateau has subzero temperatures. Nearly 40 percent of India is semiarid, with fluctuations in rainfall historically being a major factor in determining crop output. In the northeast the hill ranges, by contrast, receive heavy rains, with Cherrapunji recording over 1,000 centimeters a year.

Ecological Diversity. The diversity of terrain and habitats explains why a country of 1 billion people is also one of the world's twelve mega biodiversity (the World Conservation Union designates biological diversity by the numbers of species of animals and plants) regions. India is that rare country where the three great zoogeographic (relating to the geographic distribution of animals) regions—the Ethiopian, the Oriental, and the Alpine— overlap.

The Ethiopian is represented by lions in the Gir Forest (their only surviving habitat in Asia) and by gazelle, antelope, and acacia trees. The Oriental is represented by tigers, sloth bears, and a variety of deer species. The Alpine, or Himalayas, are represented by fauna and flora often more typical of Europe: brown bears, a subspecies of the red deer, mountain ungulates, pines, oaks, and rhododendrons. Over forty thousand species of plants and twelve hundred bird species are found, many of them native, especially in the Western Ghat Mountains.

Demographic Expansion and Economic Growth. The increase in the human population and its economy reshaped India's landscape, especially in the twentieth century. India's population density of 300 people per square kilometer masks great variations between regions. The Hindi-speaking states of the North, which cover most of the Ganges River basin or are adjacent to it, make up 45 percent of the population. In the East, Arunachal Pradesh State records densities as low as 13 people per square kilometer.

Much of the population growth is relatively recent. Estimates place India's population in 1596 at 114 million. Even in 1900, India had only 240 million people. The rate of population growth exceeded .5 percent a year only after 1921. In 1951 there were 360 million people, and the population growth rate was more than 2 percent a year until 1981.

It has slowed since then, mainly due to better health-care facilities, expansion of women's literacy, better social services, and government-sponsored family planning. The population is now growing at 1.8 percent a year, but large regions, led by Kerala State in southwestern India, record zero population growth.

The transformation of the landscape owes as much to major socioeconomic changes. The advance and retreat of forests due to ax and plow are not new, with the Indus River basin having a first wave of urbanization around 3000 все in the Harappan culture. There was a second wave of urban settlement in the Ganges River valley around 600 все.

Even during the Mughal empire (1526-1707 ce), Asian elephants were captured in parts of central India where they are now extinct; the greater one-horned rhinoceros was hunted in the Indus River basin. By the late eighteenth century there were already significant and irreversible changes in certain regions. Economic and cultural changes under British rule unleashed new forces of change.