Water Project

The Himalayan mountain region is the source of much of India’s water, providing electric power and for irrigation systems and domestic use throughout much of the Indian subcontinent. Unfortunately the flow of water to the people who live in the Himalayan region itself is far from smooth. The snows that cover the Himalayan peaks in winter melt and flow into streams and rivers that run swiftly to lower altitudes, where they provide needed water to millions of people, but there is a lack of infrastructure to ensure an adequate supply of water to the inhabitants of the Himalayas themselves. Although the Himalayan region provides watershed for much of India, the local people mostly live in poverty, due to subzero temperatures, poor soil, a very short growing season, and the extreme difficulty of accessing markets.

From 1999 to 2002, there was little snow during the winter. The lack of snow resulted in a lack of water for irrigation in the ensuing months and, thus, a serious drought in the region. A lack of water for crops results in great hardship to the economically marginal people living in Himalayan areas such as Spiti, Kinnaur, Lahaul, Ladakh, and Zangskar. In a few places, the Indian government has helped construct irrigation ditches that conduct water from the river to downstream agricultural lands. However, the few stretches of irrigation channels are inadequate, leaving thousands of people without water for their fields.
The Sutlej River runs through the region of Spiti, home to 20,000 ethnically Tibetan people. When the winter snows melt, the river swells and swirls with an abundance of pure, icy water that is ideal for irrigating the fields planted in barley, high-altitude wheat, and peas. In the absence of pumps, however, there is no way to lift the water from the river bed up to the agricultural lands. During the four years from 1999 to 2002, the people’s crops died in the fields for lack of adequate irrigation water. Just a few hundred feet away, they could see an abundance of water flowing from the mountains of Spiti to the lowlands of India, but they had no way to pump the water up to save their crops.

Dorje Tsering, a 47-year-old former monk, is seriously concerned about the welfare of the people in his native Spiti. Since 1989, he has been involved in several innovative projects in education and economic development in the region. In 1992, he raised funds to construct Yangchen Choling, a monastery and cultural center that provides traditional learning to people in the village of Pangmo.