An Ethnography of the Traditional Irrigation Practices of Leh Town

CHANGING CURRENTS: AN ETHNOGRAPHY OF THE TRADITIONAL IRRIGATION PRACTICES OF LEH TOWN

Sunandan Tiwari and Radhika Gupta

Introduction

Situated on a branch of the ancient silk route, Ladakh has been exposed to a variety of external inﬂ uences for several centuries. However, despite these, the people of this region have managed to preserve the core of their identity, traditions and practices. Over the last three to four decades the region as a whole has been exposed to yet more changes. These can be traced to the Chinese aggression in the early 1960s that brought the region into prominence at the level of the nation state. The advent of the army brought about development in the spheres of transport and communications that opened up the region to the rest of the country and the world. The last few decades have also seen the development of Ladakh as an important tourist destination. There has also been an increase in state-led development schemes in the region. The conjunction of all these factors has led to changes in the livelihoods of the local people. Despite this, agriculture remains an integral part of the lives of many Ladakhis and, though the prin- ciples and practices that surround the management of common pool resources have adapted to these changing circumstances, they remain intrinsically resilient. In this paper, by examining the set of traditions that have governed irrigation practices, we look at how traditional systems of common property are impacted by changes in the region. An ethnography of the irrigation system of Leh town demonstrates the changes and continuities. Being the fastest growing urban centre in the region, the town of Leh has been the primary locus of change. We discuss how various changes and developments have impacted the traditional system of water management.1

1 Fieldwork for this research was undertaken in October 2002 and facilitated by the Ladakh Ecological Development Group (LEDeG), Leh. We used a combination of key informant and household interviews and participatory mapping of the system. Key informants included elderly people and former water ofﬁ cials who could recall the changes in the system over time. In addition, we had discussions with relevant

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Historical Inﬂ uences and Livelihood Systems

Monarchs tracing their descent from the tenth century Tibetan king, Nyima Gon, ruled Ladakh until the mid-nineteenth century. It was conquered in 1834 by the Dogras led by Zorawar Singh, general of the Dogra King, Maharaja Gulab Singh. When the British colonised India they consolidated their rule in large parts of the country. Although the Kashmir territories were sold to the Dogras, the British continued to retain control over economic affairs due to the lucrative trans-Himalayan trade. However, the area remained largely unmapped until the British compiled census records, economic statistics, area maps and land sur- veys to document the region at the beginning of the twentieth century (Aggarwal 2001). Prior to this, accounts of Ladakh are confi ned to those of travellers and the Ladakhi Chronicles, compiled from around the seventeenth century (Francke 1998). Economically, too, Ladakh has been relatively autonomous from other parts of the country. It is a dry, cold desert with a barren and rugged mountain-scape and low precipitation, mostly in the form of snow, with an average rainfall as low as 100 mm annually. Greenery and habitation are only found in oases fed by streams running from melting glaciers and snowfi elds. The people of the region have adapted to this harsh environment, deriving a livelihood based either on pastoral nomadism in the higher areas where cultivation is not possible, or subsistence farming in comparatively lower areas. This subsistence agriculture has served the needs of the population, making them relatively self-suffi cient given the lack of easy access to commodities from other parts of the country. The majority of the Ladakhi population have been farmers. The social and economic importance of agriculture is attested to by the proverb, ‘to take a bride by pretending that tetres is his main fi eld’. As the historian Abdul Ghani Sheikh (1999) explains, Tetres was the largest fi eld belonging to the King of Ladakh, which is now part of Leh bazaar. The affl uence of a man was, thus, determined by the extent of the cultivated land he possessed. Like Moorcroft a century before him, Robert Roaf found in 1936 that in addition to agriculture there were also some local craftsmen:

government departments, headmen, land ofﬁ cials and local historians. Household interviews were conducted with ten per cent of the households in every area of the Leh catchment.

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