Lack of infra forcing people to migrate from frontier

Arteev Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, July 16

While China is building an extensive network of highways, buildings and other infrastructure along the un-demarcated Line of Actual Control (LAC), the lack of basic amenities and infrastructure in border areas of Ladakh is forcing villagers to migrate to towns.

Consequently, the population in frontier villages is thinning which, in the long run, will have serious impact on the country’s border security grid, especially India’s strategy to defend the frontiers with China, locals observed.

“Even after 72 years of Independence, we don’t have basic facilities like drinking water, electricity, road and mobile connectivity. Successive regimes at the Centre and in the state have neglected our area, though they make tall claims to strengthen borders with China,” Urgain Chodon, the female sarpanch of Demchok and Koyul villages, located few meters away from LAC, told The Tribune over phone from Leh.

Demchok is one of the most vulnerable frontier villages along LAC, where the threat of Chinese incursion looms large.

Urgain said, “We have just one Government Primary School in Koyul village, with no hostel facility. The population of Koyul village is around 500 while only 69 people are living in Demchok village, a majority of them nomads. Where will the people leave their children if they go to pastures along with livestock for grazing? Our people don’t have any other source of livelihood so they have gradually started shifting to Leh town for employment”.

The sarpanch said, “The only mode of transportation for people is a weekly bus, which reaches Koyul from Leh town every Tuesday and leaves for Leh the next day. How will they strengthen their borders with China if the residents do not have basic facilities?

Konchok Stanzin, a councillor of Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council (LAHDC), Leh, in whose constituency the sensitive Demchok and Chushul areas fall, also complained of poor infrastructural facilities for border populace.

“Our constituency shares around 150-km border with China but we are unable to construct better roads and mobile connectivity. All major road projects in our area are with BRO, but construction is moving at a snail’s pace. Our own Army does not allow us to even construct a toilet,” Stanzin said.

“Our Army does not allow nomads to move with their livestock to the upper reaches for grazing. On the contrary, China is working under a well-planned strategy in which they push nomads into our territory and later capture it due to un-demarcated boundary,” the councillor said.

“China has captured our grazing land in Demchok area for the last nine months but neither the Centre nor the Army has initiated any action to retrieve it. Chinese have constructed three and four-storey buildings on the other side. Our mobile phones catch signals of the Chinese networks but we can’t build even a toilet,” a local of Koyul village said.