Towards a comprehensive population strategy for Nepal

Nepal is entering the 1990s with a new political system. A democratically elected Government will be in office within a year’s time and one of its first tasks will be to define a fresh development strategy for the country to deal with old problems. Prominent among these are challenging population problems: a high population growth rate, heavy migration of people moving form over-exploited terraces in the mountains and hills towards an almost saturated agricultural frontier in the terai (lowlands near the border with India), scattered population settlements in most of the rural areas which make it difficult and costly to provide them with basic infrastructure and services, and an explosive growth of most of the still incipient urban centres in the country.