Let me be frank and straight: I am not with those who see a dooms-day for Ladakh in the next few decades, on various grounds. True, the people may have to fight great difficulties but it is also true that with the right earnestness and good spirit, they can find a safe way out.

Let’s have 2047 as the cut-off year before which all crucial and threatening issues need to be redressed. Why 2047? That is because the country will then attain its 100th year of Independence, and hence it can be an appropriate yardstick for many things to reckon with. Though there are many dooms-day predictors, those with a positive attitude, and they are much more in number, do believe the country would have attained many great achievements by then. The first of them would be the most important and prideful thing to happen: The country would be the third most powerful and the third strongest economy  in  the  world.  That  means,  Ladakh  too,  by  default  or planning, would have achieved many things that could help it conserve itself to a great extent.

Having said that, one can’t but look at things seriously that could challenge  Ladakh  in  the  next  2–3  decades.  Many  and  scary developments might take place because of the fast and uncontrollable climate change. Ladakh is already on the way to a ‘water-less’ region in the years to come. True, such a natural catastrophe, caused by our ‘greedy-actions’, can be quite well-controlled if the right measures are taken quite in time.

So, to enumerate some of the dangerous trends that are going to play havoc in Ladakh are: Demographic changes, mining hazards, climate change effects like fast-disappearing glaciers, excessive rains, and increase in smoke and dust pollution as a result of fast industrial developmental activities.

Fear of becoming a minority in own region

If  we  go  by  what  UT  Ladakh  is  today,  without  any  protection mechanism to safeguard its land, tradition, culture etc., the day will not be far off when the local indigenous population will be in a minority as in the case of some of the regions in the Northeast states of India. Right now, Ladakh has about 3,00,000 local people, and in terms of population density, there are not even 2 persons per square km.

There is a fear among Ladakhis that they might be reduced to a minority in their own region if no safeguards are given, and their demand has been for the Sixth Schedule of the Indian Constitution that protects land and tradition mainly by restricting non-locals from buying local land or by not allowing interference in their day-to-day lives. Their fear is that in the event of no constitutional safeguard, the chances of an influx of outsiders is great as Ladakh has huge chunks of land and valleys yet unoccupied. The 2019 reorganisation of the region curved it into UT after bifurcating it from the erstwhile State of Jammu and Kashmir. It may be recalled that the erstwhile State of J&K had strong safeguards in Article 370 and Article 35 A of the Constitution. As J&K and Ladakh were bifurcated and made UTs in 2019, the regions lost their safeguards and protection systems.

It is under such circumstances that Ladakhis have been demanding Sixth Schedule for the region, and the Union Government had promised in its poll manifesto of Parliamentary poll, 2019, and later in the local Hill Council poll manifesto that it would be granted Sixth Schedule status. But now, even after 6 years, the poll manifesto promises remain unmet. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes had, in 2019, said that Ladakh is predominantly a tribal region, and hence it had recommended its inclusion under the Sixth Schedule. Even some ministers of the Union government, like Mr Nitin Gadkari, had then promised the Sixth Schedule status for Ladakh. All these promises turned out to be mere hollow ones with nothing to show on ground.

That is why the local people and their leaders have been agitating quite regularly to get their demands fulfilled on the ground that the fragile ecosystem of Ladakh can’t stand an influx of outsiders, and, moreover, the locals would become a minority in their own region. Their argument is that if the Sixth Schedule is applicable for several regions in the northeast, then what stops the Central government from granting the same for Ladakh too. After all, Ladakh has the biggest percentage of tribals, nearly 97%, of which no other tribal area with Sixth Schedule status has.

Mining, a serious threat

Ever since Ladakh was carved out as a separate Union Territory in 2019, there has been a simmering fear that mining in the fragile ecosystem will prove to be its undoing. This kind of fear has arisen as a result of Ladakh having been granted two Hill Councils, one in Leh and the other in Kargil but without powers. That is because Hill Councils without legislative powers do not enjoy any legislative power to protect its land, hills and other characteristics of a democratic set- up. The entire process of governance lies with the Centre with its L- G (Lt-Governor) assisted by dozens of powerful Commissioner- Secretaries. They, together, control all the power-keys of governance. The CEC (Chief Executive Councillor and Councillors) are mere ‘policy implementers’, and they are allotted a mere 10% of the total annual budget that comes to nearly Rs 6000 crore per annum.

Experts say Ladakh is rich in minerals like Borax in Puga Valley, marbles in several areas of Leh and Kargil districts, limestone of cement grade, and good quality of granites. Besides, other minerals like  arsenic  ore,  borax,  gold,  limestone  and  sulphur  too  are  in abundance in some parts of the region. It is feared that such mineral- rich regions in Ladakh would be handed over to big business houses, and one or two areas in the Changthang area have, reportedly, already been ‘given away’ to business houses. The problem that would arise because of extensive mining is that most of the regions would lose their natural characteristics as exploitation of the earth and mighty mountains can go to any extent. The geographical and eco-system would be badly hurt. Not only human beings, even the wild animals, the very rare among them are snow leopards, will take a devastating hit. When the mountains, the valleys and the pasture grounds are taken away for mineral exploitation, where will the people and the animals, domestic and wild, will go for their survival?

It needs to be remembered, and seriously, that mining gives you tons of money, but, at the same time, it destroys the very ground of your existence. Ladakh is known for its mighty and breath-taking mountain ranges with more than panoramic beauty. All this will be badly affected once mineral exploitation takes place. The Ladakh hills and mountains are called its ‘veins’ without which the region can’t afford to survive.

In simple words, on the devastating causes of mining, one should loudly say that mining can lead to deforestation (whatever little the region has), complete disruption of balancing-factor by disrupting life and matter, and huge arsenic pollution that could mean one of the biggest threats to all living beings in the region.

Let us say, Ladakh’s land and mountains are given away in the years to come to big business houses, then there has to be a strict balancing factor between mineral wealth and conservation efforts. That is important because a balanced approach in mining is an absolute necessity to protect Ladakh to maintain its natural beauty and also to help all living beings stay put without any fear or scarcity of livelihood means. Let us go for nothing that will harm our future, but, at the same time, let us see if we can balance our ecosystem and its beauty with a comfortable economic system.

The bane of big industries and hotels

It is a proven fact that big industries and hotels create havoc in many ways. The bane is multifaceted in the sense that it encompasses various kinds of challenges, thereby, ultimately, hindering growth, and what is worse, sustainability will be badly hit. Another big impact would be environmental degradation as a result of large-scale industrial activities that give out pollution, and cause deforestation and resources’ depletion. As a result, the ecosystem too will be hit, besides posing a serious threat to public health. And, ultimately, such negative developments lead to climate change and global warming. That, in turn, would lead to repeated extreme and highly destructive weather conditions.  We  have  witnessed,  in  recent  years,  such  horrible phenomena in the shape of heavy rains, flash-floods happening quite often in various parts of Ladakh.

Yet another challenge we find all over is the exploitation of labour. It is a well-known fact that big industries give very little attention to the workers as they are hired on dismally low wages, with least regard to their welfare and job security. Their only concern is to pocket maximum money. In short, one can say safely that big industries and hotels pose not only an environmental threat but social and regulatory challenges too.

Climate change and glaciers

Climate change will be the single biggest challenge for Ladakh. That is because Ladakh’s climatic crisis is caused more by ‘outside factors’ than its own-created mis-deeds’. There are at least 3717 glaciers in the Ladakh range, some of them larger than 0.5 km sq. Here, it is important to understand that the Ladakh range is not entirely Ladakh region but several others too are included like those in the Karakoram range; but the waters of all these glaciers contribute to the rivers we have in the Ladakh region.

The main glaciers in the Ladakh region are the Siachen Glacier, the longest in India; the Drang Drung Glacier in Zanskar; the Nubra and Chong Kumdan Glaciers. These glaciers serve as the main vital sources of water reservoirs, and they feed all the major rivers like the Indus and the Zanskar rivers. The Siachen Glacier is located in the Karakoram Mountain ranges, and the Dram Drung Glacier is also one of the longest glaciers in the India Himalayas. And then you have another major glacier known as the Nubra Glacier because this too, like the Siachen Glacier, emanates from the Karakoram ranges in the Nubra valley. All put together, the Karakuram range has 600 other glaciers in the sub-basins.

The next significant glaciers are the Chong Kumdan Glacier, the Trango Glacier, located partly in the Karakoram and the Ladakh ranges.

Fast-melting glaciers

To  our  great  dismay,  the  last  two  decades  have  witnessed  fast- receding glaciers, to an extent that many of the smaller ones have disappeared altogether, mainly due to climate warming. A sharp change in the weather system has not only led to glacier melting but also in what is called glacial lake-outburst, that causes devastating floods in the nearby areas. One has seen such glacial burst-outs several times in the recent past. They are quite dangerous, threatening life and land like which we could very rarely see in the good old days.

The scary glacial melting phenomenon has shrunk the total glacial exposure area in Ladakh to as much as 50% since the Little Ice Age (1300-1850 CE), and that can be said to be an alarming warning. Such  a  phenomenon  threatens  the  very  system  of  the  region’s agricultural, domestic and even ground water resources. And that in turn will cause water scarcity and a huge ecological imbalance. In the last one decade, there have been cases of some villages in the Zanskar and the Changthang regions falling ‘victims’ of migration due to water- scarcity. The villagers migrated either to greener areas within their region or to Leh city for seeking means of subsistence.

There was a study on the Parkachik Glacier in the Kargil region of Ladakh recently, and it was found that the glacier retreated at an average rate of about 2 meters per year in the period 1971-1999. And, in 1999 to 2021, the retreat rate went up to about 12 meters per year. Between 2015 and 2021, the study found that the glacial receding  rate  had  gone  up  to  as  much  as  20.5  meters  per  year. Similarly, another study on the Drang Drung Glacier in the Zanskar region found that the receding rate was at least 1 meter per year between 2021-23. We are, indeed, in for great shocks in the coming decades  if  we  fail  to stop  this  ‘catastrophic  phenomenon’  from happening further.

The cause or the causes of the glacial meltdown are well-known. Climate warming, in which there is a shifting of seasons due to the so-called ‘modernisation process’, involves so many ugly aspects of lifestyle. As a result of climate warming, we have been witnessing a major shift in the seasonality of ice, disrupting the stable aquatic system; and such changes will also affect the ecosystem, thereby causing many glaciers to melt or disappear.

All this create havoc on Earth, and if such things are allowed to go on unstopped any further, our very existence will be threatened in the  next  two  decades.  Because,  rapid  melting  and  surface morphological changes of glaciers can lead to huge and devastating glacial lakes, some of them expanding the existing ones. And they, in turn, will become a source of flash-floods like of which we have witnessed in the recent past, quite often. What is more of a great scare would be water scarcity going to a scary level. Such a kind of crisis is already developing in many villages, particularly in the biggest city of Ladakh, Leh. How do you expect to live without water? The so- called migration phenomenon in search of better and safer places will be witnessed from several areas in the coming years and decades.

Water, like air, is most needed for domestic agriculture and recharging the groundwater.

And, moreover, such a dramatic change because of climate- warming can lead to several ecological impacts that we can hardly afford. What is worse, all kinds of habitations too will be hit to an unthinkable extent.

To get a clear and better picture, let us have a summary of the whole text here. Let me tell you what many Ladakhis have been heard saying at every forum, of late: They don’t want anything that will destroy the lives of their future generations, and that they are happy with the way they have been living, peacefully and happily in the lap of nature. But should Ladakh be best left out to itself? The reality and the demand of today’s time is that “leaving them all alone” may not be a possibility that one can assert with surety. However, what is possible is that we go for a good balance between Ladakh’s ecological system, its natural beauty and minimum-required modernisation and development so that nothing much of Ladakh’s future is threatened.

Let the ‘Land of Lamas’ remain in its grandeur, peacefully and happily without disturbing its essence of purity. Mankind does not need so much of modernity to have a meaningful and successful life. A moderation in every sphere of activity is the need of the time. And that can be done only through a system of protection to its land and culture, well-regulated and minimum of small industrial units, no or minimum mining, besides regulated and sustainable tourism. Only such measures can save Ladakh from complete and sure disaster in the decades ahead.

And, finally, the punchline: Ladakhis want progress and prosperity but not at the cost of losing their identity!