Demographic situation and development in Nepal.

Abstract

As in other developing countries, the pattern of high birth rates but rapidly falling mortality rates has had an adverse effect on Nepalese economic development. In terms of resources, forests are being rapidly depleted, minerals remain unexploited, land suffers from diminishing returns at present cultivation margins, water is badly used or drained away by foreign agencies, and labour is inadequately trained to be easily absorbed in the modern sector of the economy. Solving the population problem requires a double- edged approach of massive development effects on the one hand, and family planning measures backed both by the law and by social guarantees on the other. Migration from the hills to the plains of the Terai has also caused an imbalance in population distribution.-from WAERSA