Four hundred million people--if it were a country, it would be the third largest in the world--rely on the Ganges River and its tributaries for their livelihood. Six thousand rivers provide a perennial source of irrigation and power to one of the world’s most densely populated and poorest areas. The Himalayas, “the water tower of the Ganges,” provide 45 percent of the annual flow. These facts represent the potential payoffs to the populations of Bangladesh, India and Nepal as well as the threat that climate change poses to poor and already vulnerable people of these countries.
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Thursday, December 13 was a clear crisp day as I flew from Dhaka to Kalapara, a little town in southern Bangladesh, the upazilla (sub-district) headquarters of Patuakhali district, the region that had been battered by cyclone ‘Sidr’ the night of November 15. Seeing firsthand the devastation caused by Cyclone Sidr was shocking.
Some of the storm survivors recounted that the Thursday night four weeks ago was possibly the worst day of their lives. “I have lost everything – my house and all that I had, my crops, my stored food-grains, and now I wait for help to rebuild my life”, said a 70 year-old man. Taking off from Kalapara in a Bangladesh Air Force helicopter, we flew low over the cyclone-affected region. For almost an hour, over Kuakata, a tourist town on the Bay of Bengal, along the coastline, and over the affected areas of Patharghata, Southkhali, Sarankhola, Morelganj and the Sundarbans mangrove forest, a World Heritage site, we viewed the widespread destruction. It was a sad picture of huge swathes of land with destroyed standing crops, with virtually nothing left on the ground for thousands of acres. I have never seen such widespread destruction. A few months after taking over in my new post as Vice President of the South Asia region, I spent a few days and nights with Bhavnaben and her young family of salt workers on the edge of the desert in the Little Rann of Kutch in Gujarat, India. Since that time, Bhavnaben has become my touchstone of progress in India’s booming economy, and I return every year to visit them. I go to see first hand the life of India’s poorest citizens, to learn about their hopes and dreams, and to trace the small changes in their lives amidst India’s rising prosperity.
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At Alipara, about five miles further downstream from Kalapara and reached by boat, a motley crowd had gathered on an earthen embankment which had been breached. A chest-high surge of water swept through the gap washing away their assets – houses, livestock, crops and all. The villagers now survive on relief provided by various agencies. 
In the four years that I’ve known the family, they have made many efforts to improve their circumstances. When I first met them in 2003, they farmed just one salt pan, barely enough to sustain their family of seven - two sons and three daughters. By the time I returned a year later, they had taken on another pan. They were now producing twice the quantity of salt, and that too of better quality. They should be much better off now, I thought.
Mariam Claeson
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