Dear Authors,

I would recommend you to make two small changes

1) In lines 56-58 you refer to a recent visit of the newly elected prime minister of India to Nepal and Bhutan; it would be good to spell out names and dates (the paper will be available also in 10 years and people might have hard times recalling you are referring to N Modi); a link to an article on this aspect of the visit would be useful. Also, one might refer to the fact that neo-liberalism is at the center of Modi's and BJP's political platform.

2) In Section 4 "Climate Change" you seem to forget mentioning that large uncertainties exist in climate models as for the future changes in the hydro-climate of Himalayan region, both the annual mean values and the seasonal properties; this is extremely relevant given the long life time of dam projects. Such uncertainties are discussed in details in

http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/4/199/2013/esd-4-199-2013.html

and

http://www.earth-syst-dynam.net/5/67/2014/esd-5-67-2014.html

It may be worth referring to this issue, as additional source of uncertainty and aspect that should be taken into account in the process of decision-making.