Himalayas

Apocalypse Foretold

The Himalayas are a holy land, dotted with sacred lakes, divine peaks and blue glaciers that gleam and soar in…

Himalayan water woes

Himalayas are young mountains and have the third largest deposit of snow and ice in the world. Due to this, they are often referred to as the third pole of the planet. Having formed relatively recently in the Earth’s geological history, the Himalayas are fragile since they are undergoing the mountain building process. Himalayas are also the point of origin of many Asian rivers, which collectively feed more than 1.3 billion people living in the watershed of the Himalayas.

Lesser snowfall and Greater rainfall in the Himalayas in last few years

Studies from the National Centre for Polar and Ocean Research (NCPOR), under the Ministry of Earth Sciences (MoES), show that over four glaciers basins (Chandra, Bhaga, Miyar and Parvati) in the western Himalayas show an overall decreasing trend of precipitation during 1979-2018.

Himalayan chinks

The bottomline of the entire charade in eastern Ladakh is that China apparently is very well aware of the contested regions, perhaps also that it is laying a siege on territories claimed by India as its own but is plainly intolerant or disdainful of Indian sensibilities. Through the Nehru years, China got used to the policy mode of appeasement as opposed to strategic confrontation. But effective conflict management sometimes requires force in lieu of compromise.