Local Futures have worked tirelessly over the last 40 years to shift focus from expanding Globalization, to a crucial local market. Helena Norberg-Hodge founded the NGO in 1984, ten years after Ladakh was first opened to tourists and discovered a cash economy. Prior to this, the nomads and farmers of Ladakh had sustained themselves independently for thousands of years, cut off from modernisations and monetary transactions. Suddenly a slew of money, building materials and new foods were being brought in from the rest of India and by travellers from around the world. The rural settlers were inundated with fizzy drinks in plastic bottles and colourful crisp packets; unaware that these would not biodegrade like their potato peelings, they were discarded in the soil, where they still remain to this day.
The premise behind Local Futures is to encourage an awareness both in Ladakh and around the world, of the need to reduce the incessant desire for globally-shipped produce and remind ourselves of the fruits (literally) of our own soils. A guaranteed feature at every vegetable stall in Leh for example, are bananas. The prospect of them growing in one of the driest, cold deserts in the world however is non-existent, meaning they have been brought here at huge cost and petrol consumption from Southern India. There are root vegetables, seabuckthorn berries, apples and apricots in abundance however, so why on earth bananas have arrived in Ladakh is unknown. The main highway between Srinagar, Kargil and Leh opened in 1962, reducing the journey time from Kashmir from approximately 16 days by horse, to just 2 days by Jeep. The recent unrest during August 2019 in these Kashmiri cities however, caused the delivery of vegetables to Ladakh to be banned for 4 days, a long time when there is a whole city who now rely on these imports. The work of Local Futures is to reduce this need, re-educate the next generation, and remind the farmers of the endless possibilities of their own lands. It would be inappropriate to prevent modernisation, but at the cost of young people’s mental health and their historical traditions if nothing else, it has become important to support this fragile culture and ecosystem. The Shepherdess of the Glaciers is a profound documentary made by a Ladakhi film producer about his sister, who is one of only 12 Shepherds left in the remote valley of Gya, Eastern Ladakh. The Shepherdess has spent her whole life tending her family’s flock of sheep and goats, through the busy summer months into the treacherous winter mountains, where snow is often metres high, snow leopards regularly kill her lambs, and she does not see another human for months on end. This isolation is all she has known. She is painfully shy, physically weathered and cannot read or write in any language, while some of her family members speak 3 or 4 languages. However the passion and dedication to her role is unwavering. She laments the uncertainty of the future however. One of her brothers has had 4 daughters, now all in their 20s and studying or working in Leh and South India, they come back to visit the village for just a few weeks a year. With no mobile network, internet signal or running water, it’s not difficult to imagine the hardships here and complex mentality of the young people having to constantly adjust and readjust between city and rural life. However if one of the next generation does not take on the role of farming the animals, there will not be a flock. Without animals, there will be no manure for the family’s 30 barley fields, which will threaten the current organic, pesticide-free harvests. As western volunteers are drawn to exploring a simpler, organic life, there have been many unanswerable debates about whether enough is being done to encourage Ladakhi’s to also adopt this way of life. With very few young people under the age of 30 left in the villages, the farmers are now having to sell and export part of their crops, which initially fed them through the entire winter, in order to pay workers from Bihar and Nepal to help with the harvest. The Indian Government introduced a food subsidy programme with the genuine desire to help impoverished local families, by offering staples such as rice, flour and lentils at extremely reduced rates. However this was the just the beginning of the culture of dependency. Rice cannot and does not grow in this desert region, but this is the food offered to the farmers. Many now eat this over their traditional dishes, and have reduced and in some cases completely forgotten how to harvest their own alternatives such as wheat, barley and buckwheat. This is where the volunteers of Local Futures and a partner organisation ‘Julay Ladakh’ come in. The aim is to support the families with their harvests, at the same time themselves learning more about organic farming for their own benefit, without any cash being exchanged. Tar village in Sham State, 90km west of Leh, is another amazing village that is not currently accessible by road. Hopefully it will remain this way for many years to come! It is one of the last hidden villages, a 1.5-2hr walk following the river upstream, to the small cluster of a dozen houses in the valley. The Government seemingly do not quite understand the draw of this idyll however, and have lined many ugly, rusting poles metres into the sky along the route, with the aim to connect the village to central electricity. This will undoubtedly cost the villagers cash, which many do not have as they have lived solely off their inherited land, and will cause numerous problems and power outages. Currently the villages have perfectly adequate solar electricity and heating, and fresh drinking water from the ureas (irrigation channels), that offshoot the glacial river. As the highest village on that stretch of the river, before the 5000m Tar La Pass, it is only a passing Snow Leopard or Ibex that could possibly infect the river before this. Tar is undoubtedly very difficult to get to however, and there is at least one elder who is now unable to leave the village as she could not physically make the walk to the main road. To show their support, the Government have not built a road, but instead donated an area of land near to the river, that supposedly makes the main road more accessible, particularly in the winter. No means of running water, bridge to cross the vast, deathly Indus river, or path from the current village to the new stretch of land have been provided however, crucial necessities before the costs of each family building a second house on this land are even considered! The lack of new generations in the village has also forced the village school to close. A minimum of 4 pupils are needed for a Government teacher to be sent, however the school finally had to shut with just one student left in Grade 3 (around age 8). The sole child was also too young to live at the nearest school hostel where his siblings attend, so the family had to find cash to send their child to a private school with boarding when he was just 8 years old. To complicate matters, his schooling in Tar was in a different language, which meant he then had to fall back a few grades behind his peers to catch up. The sadness of his parents is difficult to see, although it is not hard to comprehend the premature loss of all of their children when they rarely see them outside of the school holidays. Now perhaps, this urgent desire for education and the sacrifices families are willing to make, can help one to understand why the next generation are struggling in their own culture. They don’t even know their parents’ after months away, let alone how to support themselves and subsist from their land and livestock. Each village is completely unique in development, culture and access to the modern world, however the lose of the next generation to the alluring lights of Ladakh and India’s major cities is all too easy to see. Western volunteers cannot and do not want to possibly replace these missing young people, but perhaps dream that one day the rural way of life can be re imagined in its own unique way, to ensure centuries of history, culture and a wealth of natural, organic knowledge can be retained for years to come.
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About meI enjoy writing and have had experience from my degree and through working on news posts. I hope to use this blog as a summary of extraordinary things I've discovered or witnessed in everyday life. Archives
March 2020
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