By cancelling the land lease of Sonam Wangchuk’s institute, which has supported local livelihoods, New Delhi will continue suppressing the region’s demands.

The Ladakh administration’s decision on August 21 to revoke the land lease of the Himalayan Institute of Alternative Learning is the latest of a series of moves aimed at suppressing a people demanding constitutional autonomy and self-governance.

Set up in 2018 by the entrepreneur-environmentalist Sonam Wangchuk, HIAL has been a hub of innovation in construction design, technology, livelihoods, and education. It has enabled Ladakhi and Himalayan youth to learn skills that they can use to create dignified livelihoods in the mountains, rather than having to migrate out of the region.

To understand the context of this development, it is necessary to consider events that have unfolded since 2019, when the Indian government separated the district of Ladakh from Jammu and Kashmir and granted it Union territory status. This had been a long-standing demand of Ladakhis, as they felt they had been neglected when they were part of Jammu and Kashmir.

But the euphoria of being granted union territory status in Ladakh was short-lived. Residents realised that with no legislature of their own, they were being ruled from even further away: a lieutenant governor appointed by New Delhi was empowered to take all key decisions.

Ladakh’s own Autonomous Hill Council, already not particularly autonomous when it was part of Jammu and Kashmir, became even more marginalised.

In particular, its control over land has been systematically eroded by the administration. Residents fear that what is happening in Kashmir, with land being allocated for various commercial purposes without consent of local communities, could happen in Ladakh too.

So, since 2022-’23, Ladakhis have been demanding autonomy under the Sixth Schedule of the Constitution, which gives tribal areas in the North East special powers of self-governance. They have also demanded full statehood, priority in job allocation and two parliamentary seats instead of one.

However, even though the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 had said it would grant Sixth Schedule status to Ladakh, it has never followed through. Instead, repeated representations and agitations by Ladakhis about this assurance have been met either with promises that it would be seriously considered by “high-powered” committees that have never materialised or by threats and repression.

What is the connection between this and the action against the Himalayan Institute of Alternative Learning ? The common factor is Sonam Wangchuk, the most visible of Ladakh’s activists.

It would be a mistake to think of the movement as being led by or predominantly revolving around him. Many others in the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance are also vocal and influential. But Wangchuk has a national and global following that makes him a particularly painful thorn for the administration.

His tactics, from outdoor fasts in Ladakh’s freezing winter to a march on foot from Leh to Delhi, have repeatedly made headlines. So, he is especially targeted. In March 2024, when he went on fast, he was accused of legal violations such as disturbing public order. In September 2024, he was arrested again with others on the Leh-Delhi march.

The revocation of HIAL’s lease comes when Ladakh is gearing up to re-launch its movement for constitutional autonomy.

The administration’s contention that HIAL has violated the terms of its land lease granted in 2018, have been countered by Wangchuk and Gitanjali Angmo, the CEO of the institute. They say they have documentary evidence to prove that the failure to comply with the conditions of the lease has been more due to delays by the administration itself – which has cited the lack of a land lease policy as the reason – rather than by HIAL.

The original lease had been made the Ladakh Hill Council, which ostensibly controls all land matters in Ladakh. The administration has even allowed HIAL to continue construction, in writing. Besides, they say that if the administration claims that the lease is supposed to have lapsed within a year, why did it take six years to revoke it?

Since it was set up, 400 students have graduated from the institution.

The larger issue, well beyond that of HIAL, is the need for the environmentally fragile region to decide its own present and future. Ladakh is quite different from most other parts of India: it is a high-altitude, cold desert ecology with a unique mix of flora and fauna; it has incredible geological beauty and has predominantly Buddhist (Leh district) and Muslim (Kargil district) cultures; it also has a 1,000 year-old history of self-governance before it was subjugated by by the Dogra kings from Kashmir; its traditional village governance structure pre-dates the panchayat system and is still going strong.

However, since 2019, the central government (and a section of Ladakhis) have pushed their own ideas of how to develop Ladakh, with a substantial budget for infrastructure, modernisation and increased government presence. Not all of this is problematic, of course, for the region does need some investment, especially to create livelihood opportunities.

But coming as it does with pre-conceived ideas based on the realities of the plains, the administration’s interventions are often inappropriate, sometimes disastrous. The encouragement to mass tourism is one example – tourist numbers have increased from just over 500 in 1974 to over half a million last year. This endangers the region’s delicate ecological balance.

Another example of this is the replacement of traditional, decentralised water management systems with a centralised, one-size-fits-all approach under the Jal Jeevan Mission, which often fails in Ladakh’s winter conditions.

Ladakh is also being made a showcase for India’s push to prove itself as a climate champion. Several mega-solar projects are being planned, including a massive one in the fragile high-altitude region of Changthang, spread over 48,000 acres. This project will take over important summer grazing grounds for the Pashmina goats and yaks of nomadic Changpa pastoralists.

It will also affect high-altitude wildlife.

Very little information on this is publicly available. There have been almost no consultations with the herder communities and no environmental and social impact assessment.

Projects like the one in Changthang involve land to be taken over, the biggest interventionist threat Ladakh faces. The administration is taking greater control over land use and allocation using its unilateral powers and loopholes in the Ladakh Hill Council Act.

Local resistance stands in the way of potentially massive profits for some private corporations.

The Sixth Schedule movement has united Leh and Kargil, which have otherwise had a tense relationship due to religious and cultural differences.

One indication of their ire against the central government was the fact that the sitting BJP MP was defeated in the 2024 Parliamentary elections by an independent candidate.

To enable a peaceful transition to ecologically and culturally sensitive governance of Ladakh, it is essential for the government to grant the region autonomy and to avoid targeting civil society for asserting the Constitutional rights of local people.

First Published by Scroll.in on September 9 2025.