Inventing Future Prosperity: The Buddhist Himalayan Region of Ladakh

Abstract

Traditional places are on the wrong side of the divide. The wrong side of the divide is the side where the poor relatives live, where things are charming and quaint, where people look for no change to have taken place where attracting investments is always a problem, where one has to struggle to reinvent a souvenir environment. One could say that traditional places are places that have been ignored in the nation building process and have become dependent territories unable to generate their own energy for gaining prosperity. Prosperity has to be invented, imagined, sought after and gained. It simply does not descend from above. Steps have to be taken to invent the future of a traditional environment.

This case study relates to a silk-route settlement called Leh located deep inside the Himalayas at an altitude of over 12,000 feet (3000 meters) above sea level. It is inhabited almost entirely by Buddhists belonging to the Tibetan Mahayana branch. There are a smaller number of Muslim families who inhabit the larger settlements and the villages that are located on the border with Pakistan. Leh is the regional capital of the region known as Ladakh, which borders both Western Tibet presently in China and Pakistan. Ladakh, like all neglected regions that are made more attractive with the suffix “traditional” has been ruled for the last fifty years with policies that address the administrative needs of the government and not the real needs of the inhabitants. Our study to determine these real needs was commissioned by the government to prepare an action plan for the period 1989 - 2009.

A large team of experts, which focused on macroeconomics, microeconomics, tourism, community health, social structures, master planning, and heritage listing and conservation strategies, evaluated these needs. From these evaluations, some startling conclusions were drawn based on which a prescription was made for future prosperity. The findings of each discipline were overlaid on each other to provide the vital clues for a correct diagnosis of the settlement as a whole including its surrounding region. Some of the more important findings will be presented along with recommendations that need to be followed. The most significant broad proposal that emerged out of the study was the need to redefine the development track for the region. We found that the rapid changes that are taking place in the social fabric were due to the rapid move of resources into the tertiary (service) sector. The consequences of this could be seen in the wheeling dealing and accusations of corruption that dominated all conversations and interviews. Consequently we warned the administration not to remain indifferent to this trend and to take urgent steps to restore the production base of the region and to discourage investment in the tertiary sector. The methodologies developed during this study were later used in a number of successful development reorientation strategies in other regions.

Citation

Khosla, R. (2006), "Inventing Future Prosperity: The Buddhist Himalayan Region of Ladakh", Open House International, Vol. 31 No. 4, pp. 86-89. https://doi.org/10.1108/OHI-04-2006-B0011