The Indo-Gangetic plain

Every year, two massive monsoons grace India with lush rainfall before expiring in the towering mountain ranges that isolate the region. First as snow, then as glaciers, then as sediment-rich runoff, this water returns to the subcontinent in three massive rivers: the Ganges, flowing eastwards across the north of India; the Brahmaputra, flowing south to meet the Ganges in Bangladesh; and the Indus, flowing south through the arid reaches of the west. It is the Indus, now the aorta of Pakistan, that granted the region and its native religion their names, as Indus became Hindustan and finally India and Hinduism.


The vast fertile swath created by these three rivers, known as the Indo-Gangetic plain, is today home to over 900 hundred million people. Many live in some of the largest cities on earth-- Islamabad, Karachi, Delhi, Kanpur, Kolkata, Dhaka-- but most reside in the countless small villages typical of South Asian life. Even today, over 60% of Indians draw their primary income from agriculture, even though it only accounts for only 28% of GDP. To a large degree, it is this economic pattern that explains why 300 million Indians live on less than $1 a day, and 750 million on less than $2 a day. Yet it is the ability to support enormous numbers of people that grants India its richness, whether in the earth-shaking armies of the Mughal Empire or the growth of today's IT economy.