All The best

In arid cold desert of Ladakh, the changing seasons signifies a completely different lifestyle for its people.  Summers are short when few vegetables can be grown in the plain areas and when the cattle herds can be taken up to the mountains to graze in the green, luxuriant pastures.  All this would change after October when the temperatures start plummeting; when snow starts to cover the mountains and icy wind begin to blow.

The road links primarily National Highways from Manali in Himachal Pradesh and from Srinagar begin to look deserted and slowly get covered by snowfall, so thick and continuous that it takes a long time to melt and clear once the winter ends.  To the rest of the world, Ladakh remains cut off, inaccessible for six months.  The whole region gets covered by a white blanket of snow.  But how do the people manage, in this bone-chilling, mind-numbing winter?  The whole of Ladakh goes into a deep recess with all of life being sustained on resources gathered and stored in the summer.

Around 90 percent of Ladakhi people are dependent on agriculture for their livelihood.  In the rest of the country, we hear of two seasons of cultivation, the ‘rabi’ and ‘kharif’. The range of crops that can be grown in the plains is vast, their sowing and harvesting being done according to seasons. Here in Ladakh the farmers have to cultivate land in a very compressed time frame with a limited range of cultivable crops. 

In the long winters, where does the food, specially the vegetables come from, considering the short growing period and limited range of crops?  It is required for keeping up the nutritional needs of the people. In Ladakh, one is dependent on what has grown before the snow begins to fall.    Airlifting vegetables from outside is simply too expensive.

I know these processes only too well, coming as I do from an agricultural background. I vividly remember when as a child, my grandparents would take me to the fields and dig the ground (sadong) deep, down to 5-6 feet.  Curious, I would scamper around and ask why the soil was dug so deep.  Nodding wisely, my grand mother then told me a fact, which is a truism for all time, for all people in Ladakh. “We have a long winter ahead, so we have to store vegetables like potato, carrot, radish and turnips for survival”.

Grandmother’s words have remained with me and today I can see the wisdom in it, signifying a way of life, a pattern of consumption for the entire region, a pattern that ensures their very survival.  If you slip up here, nature is unlikely to give you a second chance.  A totally different scenario from the plains where you just walk down or cycle down or take a bus at the most to the nearest mandi. If vegetables are not available on one day for any reason, you are bound to get them the next day.  In Ladakh you will have to wait for the season to change for that to happen! 

Still everything was not perfect.  Left in this kind of storage, deep underground, there were problems of ventilation.  The moisture in the ground, lack of air would make the vegetables rot gradually.  Of course, they would not rot all together; yet it was impossible to ‘isolate’ the ones which were rotting fast and the rest, so in the end, it the entire mass would be affected.  Some could be salvaged and consumed fast, others thrown away. Every winter, it would be an exercise in deft management of underground supplies; the price to pay was heavy however.  The lack of fresh food would invariably affect the health of the people.  Malnutrition, heart diseases, indigestion, acidity and body fatigue were common.

Age-old practices of cultivation, cooking, consumption and also storage have been followed in Ladakh, evolved by our ancestors, who have observed nature’s patterns and developed practices in sync with it. . However, as I grew up, I realised that we need to move beyond this traditional wisdom, to evolve  ‘good practices’ based on modern technologies to improve the quality of life in the region.

I have been amazed and delighted both to find Greenhouses coming up on Ladakh’s desolate and icy landscape over the last few years. The region is blessed with plentiful sunshine in the winter months.  The Jammu and Kashmir state government has taken cue from this and introduced an initiative to build these structures. Now farmers in Ladakh have the option of. Growing vegetables throughout the year, something unbelievable in grandmother’s days! I was glad to be witnessing this change, in era, in practices, in the way of life that us Ladakhis have known over the generations.

It is actually a concerted effort. Government departments like Horticulture, Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology (SKUAST), Agriculture and Defence Research & Development Organisation (DRDO) all are involved in this initiative. Non governmental organisation like Ladakh Environmental and Health Organisation (LEHO) also have played an important role in creating awareness amongst the farming community about new technologies.  providing hybrid seeds. And offering support to build these structures including providing poly film on subsidised basis

The ‘Greenhouse effect’ if it can be called that in Ladakh has a salutary effect, not only on the food production, sustainability and diversification of crops but an additional income to its vast majority, still dependent on farming in this high desert mountainous region.  The results are stupendous.  Farmers are growing vegetables which for Ladakh are exotic; capsicum, cucumber, brinjal, cauliflower onion, carrot, spinach tomato, chilli broccoli and knol khol.  They are also growing seeds, gradually getting into multiple cropping. Unheard of plant varieties like rose garlic, sweet potato, asparagus are now growing beautifully in the winter season and being ready for planting of their cutting again in the early spring out in the open.  This is really Ladakh’s version of ‘rabi’ and ‘kharif’!

For my grandmother’s generation, it is nothing short of a miracle. Biting frost outside and all these wonderful vegetables happily growing, cocooned in their hothouses, receiving the goodness of sunshine within and protected from the cold without. This is not a miracle, but a technological marvel, a sign of the changing times.  To use the scientific and technological advances for the good of the people, particularly in harsh terrains like Ladakh is what I believe to be wisdom, equal to but different from those passed down over the generations.