Last week the worst flood in 24 years hit Nepal, the Himalayan country between China and India. Six million people in the Terai region were directly affected, and since 80% of the crops were destroyed in the only flat region of the country, there will be risk of “food insecurity.” Prior to the flood, this region had areas with high rates of childhood stunting (up to 60% IIRC), and so, the flood is not good news.
And of course, nobody reported this catastrophe in the USA news.
for more uptodate info you can follow #Nepalflood2017 hashtag on twitter.
My favorite Nepali journalist is Subina Shrestha, who composed this piece for Al Jazeera:
and this:
In these days of cloudsourced assessment, the group “codeforNepal” has published an interactive map of the affected areas: codefornepal.org/…
and naturally, somebopdy had to find some good in there, some how….
The eastern Terai, where the worst of the flooding took place, is also “Province 2” in the new constitution, and the politics there are gnarly — impossible to explain in brief. This is the area that postponed elections last June due to inability to organize.
This event is the latest in a long list of disasters to hit Nepal.
I was there for only six weeks this year (May to July) and though I spent five weeks in the now-affected region in 2016, I did not go there this year. My friends tell me they are safe. In the rural areas, the loss of crops is a dire problem with longterm consequences.