In the name of infrastructure, tourism and development of Ladakh, we are witnessing an invasion of the economy of the plains over the ecology of the hills, the consequences of which have already been witnessed in recent years in Uttarakhand and Sikkim.
When six civil society leaders of Ladakh, who are leading the protests in the region, met home minister Amit Shah on 4 March, it was their first meeting since 2020. What came to be known publicly was that the “meeting did not result in any positive outcome”, but more interesting was what happened behind closed doors. Shah bluntly told them off: we can give you neither statehood nor the Sixth Schedule or a legislature, he said. He also said he made a mistake by making Ladakh a union territory.
One of the participants recently recounted to Article …
Sushant Singh is a lecturer at Yale University. Previously, he was a senior fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi, and deputy editor of The Indian Express. A winner of the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Excellence in Journalism Awards in 2017 and 2018, he had earlier served in the Indian Army for two decades. He is also the author of Mission Overseas and co-author of Note by Note: The India Story.
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