Social and Economic Characteristics of Ladakh, India
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Social and economic characteristics of Ladakh, India. Katharine Sherratt Geology for Global Development This report was commissioned for charitable purposes, by Geology for Global Development. The report is intended to provide a useful compilation of literature, media and statistics relating to culture and demographic characteristics of Ladakh for charities, local authorities or students working in Ladakh or the surrounding regions. No responsibility can be accepted for any errors, mistakes or inaccuracies, but we would be happy to correct any errors brought to our attention in a second edition. Licencing and attribution The content on this report is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence (CC BY). This means that: Copyright on any article is retained by the author(s) for the post. The name of a post author is specified in the by-line. Any third party can use the article freely as long as its original authors and citation details are identified. 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The original authors and source must be given credit For any reuse or distribution, it must be made clear to others what the license terms of this work are. 2 Executive summary 1 Social and economic aspects of Ladakh 06 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Agriculture, property and the economy 1.3 Social and economic shifts 1.4 Environmental resources and change 09 2 The Changpa tribe 3 Communication 11 3.1 Infrastructure 3.2 Education 3.3 Localised education initiatives 4 The future: adaptive capacity 13 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Societal resilience 4.3 Economic resilience 4.4 Institutional planning 5 References 16 Appendix a: Commonly used administrative divisions of Leh district, Ladakh 18 3 Executive Summary Ladakh has a population density of three people per square kilometer. It has been described as a “constellation of villages” within the “crossroads of Asia” (Pelliciardi 2010). Despite extreme topography, and a highly variable cold desert climate, agriculturalists have strategically managed the environment for perhaps 8,800 years (Miehe et al 2009), but the risks are changing as a result of recent and rapid climatic and socio-economic shifts. It is possible to adapt to risk, if it the context is understood and the risks are well communicated. Since India’s partitioning, there have been continuing border disputes from both Pakistan (since the 1940s) and China (since the 1960s). Ladakh itself, under the state of Jammu & Kashmir, is divided between the Buddhist majority Leh district, and the Islamic Kargil district. Historically, subsistence agriculture has been a major component of both society and the economy. Pastoralists trade dairy, wool, and pashmina goat fibre. Arable farming, of barley and wheat, is tightly constrained to the summer months, between May and September (LAHDC 2011). The economy in Leh is expanding. Integration into India, and demand from an Army base, resulted in a rapid investment in physical infrastructure. Opening to tourism in 1974 created thousands of jobs, and now contributes up to 50% of the region’s GDP (Pelliciardi 2010). The district population has inreased by 44% in twenty years (LAHDC 2012), partly due to rural-urban migration. Cash-poor farmers, traditionally working with a barter-exchange economy, now depend on access to the urban monetary market. Population growth has increased pressure on limited environmental resources. While soil erosion deteriorates in the west, the south and Changthang suffer from groundwater vulnerability and hiking trail fragmentation (Geneletti & Dawa 2009). Water is a key issue, with reliance on either meltwater or springs; water shortages downstream can arise due to upstream damming and reservoirs (Le Masson 2013). Although long-term climate change may increase immediate meltwater runoff, water supply may decrease in the long term (ibid.). Networks for communicating risk and response are limited. Road access consists of two highways, Leh- Srinagar and Leh-Manali, both closed annually for 7 months with heavy winter snowfall. Of Leh’s 112 villages, 97 have a connected road, while the average distance to district headquarters is >180km (ibid). However, in an emergency, the Army base’s communication network is regularly maintained and updated. Airports (at Leh, and the Army base’s landing strip in Nyoma) provide regional transport infrastructure. The telephone operator BSNL connects most villages, whereas the other, Airtel, is more limited. While mobiles are increasingly used, radios are the most widely distributed, with near 100% coverage (Le Masson 2013). Literacy rates in Ladakh are higher than the rest of India, but they are unequal for each gender: 89% male, and 65% female. While most speak Ladakhi with local variants, Hindi, Urdu, and English are taught from grade I. Despite compulsory education from 6-14, Leh district averages 35% pass at matriculation (LAHDC 2012). The restrictive national curriculum, and regular teacher rotation (or absence), fails to motivate locally relevant education (Mellon 2001). However, NGO combined with state reforms of 2005 have encouraged Ladakh-specific teaching, particularly of environmental constraints and impacts (SECMOL 2006; Dana 2007). 4 Potential short-term risks in Ladakh include landslides, avalanches, earthquakes, drought, and locus/disease hazards. A rare cloudburst over Leh and nearby villages in August 2010 delivered 14 inches of rain in 2 hours, resulting in flash floods and building collapses which killed over 200 people. Fatalities in the young and the elderly were disproportionately high, as may be expected (Gupta et al 2012). However, overall fatalities were 62% male, highlighting the interaction of age and gender in determining vulnerability. This may be explained by the high proportion of males living in the worst affected area of urban Leh Community and religious affiliations are a key part of people’s support networks. Relatives of victims were the primary source of aid after the cloudburst: supporting reconstruction, giving a portion of land, or helping find new employment (Le Masson 2013). Effective aid was also provided by some established NGOs, but some cash was misdirected towards constructing unsuitable shelters. There are concerns that medical capacity could be insufficient for disaster response (Wiley 2002; Gupta et al 2012; Arsalaan et al 2012). For Leh district, there are 76 doctors (of whom, half are concentrated in Leh town), 55 nurses, and 40 Tibetan Buddhist Amchi practitioners (LAHDC 2012). Long-term pressure on the single equipped district hospital, in Leh is high; when this flooded, nearly all the injured had to be treated at the military hospital. Financial risk adaptation occurs on a small scale. Informal insurance schemes can be popular, and the binding of the agricultural economy with village social structure means protection from loss is usually available; this may not be the case for rural-urban migrants. Formal financial insurance is limited, given the very few banking facilities outside of Leh, and high fixed interest rates (J&K Bank 2013); however, trade is protected by the many agricultural cooperatives (LAHDC 2012). Under both India and Jammu & Kashmir disaster management, immediate responses to the cloudburst involved search-and-rescue, shelter, and food and water provision by the Indian forces. The Leh Indian Army base has the best (and most secure) emergency response facilities in the district. With the main BSNL telephone exchange destroyed, the Army provided a functioning line of national communication; as well as using their hospital, army air transport were able to air-lift critically injured to better medical facilities at Chandigarh. Leh district’s disaster management plan lays out the range of available facilities, infrastructure and communications for dealing with hazards (LAHDC DCO 2011). A disaster committee includes input from all major district departments; each block’s headquarters has a ‘control room’ with a protocol for directing response to, and raising awareness of, hazards. Ladakh faces a rising population, land use change, and a changing climate. In the face of this socio- economic complexity, understanding the vulnerability of different groups will be key to reducing risk in future disasters. 5 1. Social and economic aspects of Ladakh 1.1 Introduction In an area slightly smaller than Portugal, Ladakh has a population density of about 3 people per km2 (Table 1). Despite extreme topography, and a highly variable cold desert climate, agriculturalists have strategically managed the environment for perhaps 8,800 years (Miehe et al 2009). This report presents an overview of the nature, communication, and management of risk in Ladakh. Ladakh gained geopolitical significance in Population Gender ratio the 1940s due to partitioning disputes with (% of district) (m:f) Pakistan to the north, and, since the 1960s, Leh district 133,487 0.89 China to the east (Cons & Sanyal 2013; Leh block, urban 35,324 (24%) 0.61 Figure 1). However, the infrequent border area frictions have little negative impact on Leh block, rural 22,920 (15.6%) 0.86 Ladakhis. In fact, the permanent Indian Nyoma block 11,103 (7.6%) 0.93 Army base benefits both the economy and Table 1: Demography of selected blocks in Leh district infrastructure. On a regional political scale, Source: LAHDC-Leh 2012 Ladakh comes under the State of Jammu & Kashmir. Since 1995, Ladakh has had its own Autonomous Hill Development Council, formed in recognition of its dissimilar regional population and governance issues (this was split in 2003 into LAHDC-Leh, and LAHDC-Kargil; Appendix a).