Inner Terai Valleys of Nepal - Climate and Economy

Climate and Economy

The Terai has a humid, subtropical climate, warm in the winter and hot (often over 40°C) in the summer. The monsoon period of torrential rains lasts from mid-June to mid-September. Most areas in the Terai get over 1,500 mm of rain in a year. In the past, the inner and outer Terai were a formidable barrier between Nepal and potential invaders from India because marshes and forests were infested by anopheline mosquitos that transmitted virulent strains of malaria, especially during the hot spring and rainy summer monsoon. The Inner Terai is also rich in animal life, including rhinoceros, tiger, and reptiles including gharial and mugger crocodiles.

Inner Terai valleys were historic strongholds of Tharu, Danuwar and other peoples who had evolved genetic, behavioral and architectural means to resist malaria. Beginning in the 1950s, malaria suppression programs using DDT opened the Inner Terai to settlement by investors from India and the more developed parts of Nepal who introduced modern agricultural methods. Subsistence farmers from the hills where population growth was outstripping finite amounts of cultivable land also arrived. Indigenous terai peoples were largely illiterate and often exploited by moneylenders, losing landholdings and even being reduced to debt bondage.

Both Inner and Outer Terai have become Nepal's richest economic regions, with fertile farms and forests because of the area's generally flat terrain that is drained and nourished by several rivers. The Terai also has the largest commercially exploitable forests.