Much has been written about the necessity and possibilities of India-Nepal cooperation, about the opportunities to create win-win situations, but there has been relatively little progress. Despite rhetorical gestures and commitments to explore joint projects, it is not clear that there is going to be progress amongst the states of South Asia to manage their shared geographical destinies better, anytime soon. This will require magnanimity, a willingness to overcome real and imagined historical resentments, and pragmatism about development, that the states of the region cannot seem to commit themselves to. So our borderlands remain these nether zones of underdevelopment, abridged from their natural geography, less likely to be physically well-connected to the rest of the country, and also its mental consciousness. They are frontline victims of nation-state ideologies in the region.

The second issue this has opened up is our understanding of flood plains and their management. What is disquieting about this episode is not simply that there was no timely action on monitoring the breach, but the very premises of our flood control policy are being called into question. What needs to be done is a matter for experts to determine. But it is striking the degree to which the intellectual premises of our flood control policy seem to have gone into a kind of intellectual auto pilot, not able to assess the consequences of its own past interventions. The variance in discharge in North Indian rivers is such that our policies of encroaching on flood plains are misguided. Perhaps only a great flood in Delhi caused by the embankment of the Yamuna will concentrate our minds on a national flood plains strategy. By all accounts, this issue of how we manage our flood plains will become increasingly relevant for the rest of India as well.

... contd.