u/Senior-Reason400

Nepal’s Prime Minister Balendra Shah has put an important idea on the table at the UN.
He proposed a Himalayan Climate Resilience Mechanism, led by Nepal, India and China, focused on:
sharing satellite data and technical expertise
monitoring dangerous glacial lakes
strengthening joint early-warning systems
coordinating disaster response across borders
The idea is simple: the Himalaya does not follow political boundaries, so disaster preparedness cannot be entirely fragmented by them.
And the timing is important.
A month ago, the Himalaya reminded us why this matters
On August 26, a massive ice-and-rock collapse near the Nepal–Tibet border triggered a devastating flood cascade.
Roads, bridges, hydropower infrastructure and settlements were destroyed.
But this was not an isolated warning.
India has already seen similar events.
Chamoli, 2021:
A massive rock-and-glacier collapse became a debris flow. More than 200 people were killed or went missing.
Sikkim, 2023:
A moraine collapse sent a flood approximately 385 km downstream and destroyed the Teesta III dam.
Joshimath, 2023:
A government warning about unstable terrain existed as far back as 1976, decades before severe subsidence occurred.
The uncomfortable question is therefore not simply whether these hazards are “natural.”
It is:
When we know about a hazard, who is responsible for acting on that knowledge?
India’s stake is enormous
The Himalaya is not merely India’s northern border.
It is the source system for the Ganga, Indus and Brahmaputra basins.
Roughly two billion people depend on water originating in the Hindu Kush Himalayan region.
The Himalaya is also geologically young, steep and seismically active, while warming is changing glaciers, snow and permafrost.
A collapse at high altitude can become a debris flow much lower down and eventually a flood hundreds of kilometres away.
So this isn’t only an environmental issue.
It is simultaneously about:
water, infrastructure, energy, livelihoods, disaster management and national resilience.
There is also a deeper Bharatiya way of looking at the problem
The civilizational idea of kṣetra offers an interesting way to think about this.
A kṣetra is a region understood by what it is, rather than merely by who holds jurisdiction over it.
In the Bharatiya tradition, Janapadas were associated with rivers and mountains, while tīrtha networks crossed political boundaries.
That changes the question.
Instead of asking only:
“Whose jurisdiction is this?”
we can also ask:
“What does this place require, and who is responsible?”
That distinction matters enormously for a mountain system that crosses states and international borders.
Sadhguru’s Kathmandu proposal
After the Nepal tragedy, Sadhguru spoke in Kathmandu about the possibility of a Himalayan Board involving:
India
Nepal
China
Bhutan
Pakistan
The proposal does not necessarily require these countries to surrender sovereignty or create one authority governing the entire mountain.
A more practical starting point would be:
shared consultation + shared data + shared early warnings.
The goal could be to make warnings move machine-to-machine rather than ministry-to-ministry.
Start with what is possible.
India doesn’t need to wait for a grand treaty
India already has substantial capabilities:
ISRO/NRSC satellite capabilities
the Glacial Lake Atlas
IMD forecasting
NDMA
state disaster-management institutions
The challenge is connecting knowledge to obligation.
A hazard assessment should not simply become another report.
It should produce:
an owner + a deadline + an action.
And before major infrastructure is built in a fragile mountain environment, there should be a fundamental question:
Is this actually where we should build?
We have already seen what happens when warnings remain reports
The experience of the Gadgil Commission in the Western Ghats is relevant here. We had the report, Wayanad still happened again.
The lesson isn’t that one report could have predicted or prevented every subsequent disaster.
The larger lesson is that scientific knowledge has to translate into governance.
Otherwise, we end up in a familiar cycle:
hazard → disaster → committee → report → recommendations → institutional memory fades → next disaster.
The Himalaya deserves better than that.
One mountain, fragmented governance
The Himalaya is one connected mountain system.
India governs its portion through 13 Himalayan states and Union Territories, while the broader mountain system crosses multiple countries.
The mountain doesn’t care where one administrative boundary ends.
Neither does a river.
Neither does a landslide.
Neither does a glacial lake outburst flood.
If the mountain is one system, perhaps our disaster intelligence should be one system too.
Nepal has put the proposal on the table.
India already has much of the science and technological capability required.
The question now is whether we can build the institutional mechanisms to connect them before the next disaster rather than after it.
The knowledge was never missing.
The obligation was.

Ramabai Ranveer, a 47-year-old mother from Beed, Maharashtra, ran a marathon barefoot and secured first place, with the ₹3,000 prize money going towards her daughters’ education. She works as a cook and has been raising her two daughters on her own after losing her husband in an accident. Sometimes a mother’s determination really does go beyond words. ❤️

op

Don't know how many of you have seen Jayasuriya in his prime but I still remember as a kid how terrorized I was by his name🥶

He used to hammer us so bad that we used to discuss so many conspiracy theories in school. Someone would say he has some metal hidden inside his bat, someone would say he takes drugs before coming out to bat that's why he hits it so far😭

But what an absolute beast of player he was. He changed the way Odi cricket was played with his performance in the 1996 WC.

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The images coming from Nepal and the Himalayan region are devastating.

A massive collapse of glacier ice, rock and debris triggered catastrophic flash flooding across the Nepal–Tibet border, sweeping through communities and destroying homes, roads, bridges and other infrastructure. Rescue operations are still underway, and the scale of the tragedy is continuing to unfold.

While scientists are still investigating the precise chain of causes behind this particular event, the larger warning is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: a warming Himalayan region is making glaciers, permafrost and high-mountain slopes increasingly unstable.

But there is another aspect of this crisis that deserves discussion: climate injustice.

I was reminded of a conversation by Acharya Prashant on climate change where he raises a difficult point:

Emissions do not respect national borders.

The carbon released because of consumption in one part of the world does not remain there. Yet the consequences are often borne disproportionately by vulnerable communities, poorer populations, children, future generations and other living beings who contributed little to creating the crisis.

That raises an uncomfortable question.

When disasters like this happen, we usually ask:

“Why is nature doing this to us?”

Should we also be asking:

“What are we doing to nature - and who is paying the price for our way of living?”

Climate change is usually discussed as a problem of technology, energy policy, and emissions targets. Those things matter.

But Acharya Prashant takes the inquiry one step further: behind emissions is consumption, and behind consumption are human desires.

If our idea of a successful life continues to mean consuming more, owning more, travelling more, extracting more, and endlessly expanding our material footprint, can technology alone solve the problem?

The Nepal tragedy shouldn't be opportunistically used to claim that climate change has been proven to be the sole cause of this particular flood. That would go beyond what scientists currently know.

But neither should we ignore the larger context in which such Himalayan disasters are occurring.

I’m attaching a short clip from Acharya Prashant on climate injustice and its silent victims. The original discussion was not specifically about this Nepal flood, but I found the underlying question painfully relevant today:

Those who contribute least to the climate crisis can end up paying some of its greatest costs.

Would be interested to hear how others see this:

Can the climate crisis really be solved without questioning our culture of ever-increasing consumption?

FULL VIDEO LINK CLICK╰┈➤ˎˊ˗

To love is human, to feel pain is human, yet choosing love despite the pain is something divine. 🤍✨

Dharwad to Vasco train! Waited more than an hour to witness this beauty! 💙

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