Paradox called Ladakh: A juxtaposition of beauty and struggle-- - Anil Gupta Just a few days ago, I returned from Ladakh, where I had gone with my students as part of Shodhyatra course. We were trying to learn from four teachers; viz. the one within, the one around, the one in nature and the one among common people, while trekking over 15,000 feet, one day after another. Trekking in cold desert and holding discussions about learning from life in the thin air, literally inadequate oxygen can cause distress. But compared to the stress of the people who live in these conditions, ours was much less. While talking to local community members, it became apparent that despite expansion in tourism, the loss due to flash floods a few years ago hadn’t been adequately recouped. The film ‘Three Idiots’ had helped draw attention to the natural beauty of the cold desert, but the difficulties that local people live with hadn’t really lessened. Let me illustrate. In Sirthi village, there were 46 students and 13 teachers in the government school. The nearby private school had 300 students. Teachers acknowledged that having been selected through public service competition, they were apparently much more competent. But because of the policy of transfer every two years, the long-term bonding with the community did not take place sufficiently. Our students had carried CDs of open source content for school education and gifted the same to the teachers. An effort is being made to send entire Khan Academy content as well as hundreds of ILFS science videos to these schools. But, the computer was not working. Same was the case with the generator. The consciousness of the country has not been stirred enough to make the mountains the pivot of authentic, genuine and wholesome development. Introduction of potato varieties for seed purposes by a large company did not succeed, but it boosted production for table purposes. Almost every house had a diversified vegetable garden which meant wholesome nutrition for children. This is a lesson that rest of the country needs to learn. Despite better irrigation facilities and other developmental infrastructure, we do not have similar attempt by farmers in most of the other states. Earlier in Anantnagar district of J&K state during a separate Shodhyatra, we had observed the same practice. It is not surprising that J&K is one of the states with lowest malnutrition among children. It needs to be highlighted that economic opportunities have not grown much for locals. Despite having one of the purest streams of water, bottled water was brought from Delhi and Jammu. Similarly, despite having sufficient production of organic apples, apple juice came packed all the way down south from Sri Lanka. Absence of food processing facilities was a conspicuous sign of policy indifference. In the context of tourism, many of the facilities were availed by outsiders while local travel agencies small as these were, could not compete with them. It was obvious that local travel agencies were much more responsible and concerned about environment. There was no legal requirement for trekking agencies to ensure that all the garbage, properly sorted, was brought back to Leh for systematic recycling. There were not many facilities for segregation, sorting and proper disposal of waste. Though comparatively speaking, mountains were much cleaner, there could be much better conditions of self-regulation to make it even better. Unemployment among the local youth was very high and support services for risk funding were extremely poor. Almost all the clothes sold in the local market were made outside and did not carry local designs or use local fabric. There could be nothing more tragic than the tourists carrying artefacts which were not locally made and therefore did not do anything to help the local economy. We did come across a few shops which promoted refilling of existing bottles with filtered water, buying fresh juice and glasses and exploring organically produced soaps and other products. But, there were very few such enterprises. There was no major effort to promote inherently organic produce processed locally, branded locally for people to carry away or consume locally. There are immense opportunities for the development of the region and a more responsive administration, more caring markets and more concerned policy planners can avoid situation of alienation going out of hand. Before the youth becomes restive, there is a need for a major effort for promoting innovation and enterprises. The Buddhist tradition and outstanding institutions such as Mahabodhi temple created singlehandedly by Bhikshu Sanga Sen demonstrate how much the culture of this region can contribute for spreading the message of peace, brotherhood and compassion. The home stay facilities which our students availed of are extremely good initiative of the state. We hope that Ladakh grows without damage to its environment, erosion of culture and loss of identity. dnaindia/analysis/1886178/column-paradox-called-ladakh-a-juxtaposition-of-beauty-and-struggle
Posted on: Sun, 08 Sep 2013 17:03:05 +0000
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