Ground-up development in the Indian Himalayan Region

Why I did this project

I chose to join the Duke Impact Investing Group because I wanted to blend my theoretical studies in development economics with a better understanding of what development work looks in the real world.

When the opportunity came up to work on this project with the Himalay Unnati Mission, I leapt on it; the Himalayas are truly a breathtaking natural feature, and the people who live there are courageous, admirable and deserve more. Therefore, I wanted to learn more about what is being done by the government and ground actors to improve their livelihoods. I also wanted to examine what more could be done, and what are the best approaches to address a tricky spatial inequality challenge.

What I did

I served as the project team's economic development subject matter expert. I was in charge of understanding the obstacles that hindered the Indian Himalayan Region's economic development. Two big challenges constantly popped up — first, out-migration from the Himalayas, and second, infrastructural underdevelopment.

These challenges are very much inherently tied to the geographical challenges of living in the mountains — the cost of infrastructure delivery is far higher in the mountains, and it's much more challenging to have the kinds of opportunitities that are in big cities that high up in the mountains.

I went on to examine what was being done to address these challenges, covering primarily governmental efforts. I came to realize how, in the context of the Indian Himalayan Region, the government can only provide broad strokes approaches. The kind of on-ground sensing that's needed for an effective IHR development strategy needs to come from grassroots actors. This led me to clearly understand and state the Himalay Unnati Mission's genuine value proposition — it wasn't meant to take over the work of the government, but rather fill in the blank spaces where government couldn't operate effectively.

Finally, I brainstormed some solutions that could address some of the economic, ecological, and cultural challenges we highlighted through our study. In doing this, I built a brainstorming tool — a parameter-tweaked Google AI Studio model, with a higher-than-normal temperature and with specialized context on the Himalayas based on OSINT resarch I did. This AI tool helped me generate new ideas fast; certainly, my human instinct was critical in understanding when the model's temperature was too high and its ideas too unrealistic.

Some ideas for the Himalayas

1. A good Payment for Environmental Services (PES) regimen that goes straight to the people who have an opportunity cost to keeping glaciers, forests, etc. less built-up — this might improve Himalayan residents' livelihoods, and assign the truth market worth to earth resources. Environment + economic development.
2. Film a documentary with Netflix/Hulu/Prime showcasing the lives of Himalayan inhabitants, not just those who climb the mountains. Changes the narratives from the "hero" stories of those who conquer the mountains, towards those who live in harmony with it. Tell their stories; earn some money which goes straight into economic development efforts.
3. Utilize Starlink satellite internet infrastructure to improve internet connectivity in the IHR — enables information flows that are critical today.
4. Create cooperatives to pool production & potentially vertically integrate — allows Himalayan enterprises to capture more of the value chain, not just primary production.
5. Allow diaspora and rural leaders to lead local development programs — ground-up efforts suffer from fewer accountability failures, and have a better ground pulse.

What's next

I think the Indian Himalayan Region still has a long way to go in terms of development. At some point, I want to implement an idea that one of my friends suggested — a centralized tracker examining the progress of efforts to develop the Indian Himalayan Region, to hold the government and NGO actors accountable.

I don't have policy fiat in this area, of course, so any change I can actually affect is in the realm of tools and software. This might be an interesting vibe-coding project in the future.