Caught between Paper Plans and Kashmir Politics: Disaster Governance in Ladakh, India

Field, Jessica

doi:10.17645/pag.v8i4.3143

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Kargil has also been affected by power politics and conflicts in the neighbouring Kashmir valley [71]. The place has experienced significant administrative and governance transformation over the last decades.…”

Section: Post-independence Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of Mountain Urbanisation: Evidence from the Trans-Himalayan Town of Kargil, Ladakh, India

Hussain

Schmidt

Nüsser

2023

Land

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Small and medium-sized towns in the high mountain regions of South Asia are characterised by rapid and mostly unplanned urbanisation processes, regularly resulting in an increased risk of urban agglomerations being exposed to natural hazards. After the administrative capital of Leh, Kargil town is the second-largest urban centre in the Union Territory (UT) of Ladakh. This article discusses the development and dynamics of the trans-Himalayan town in terms of its historical development, expansion and population; land use and land cover (LULC) change; and the specific role of tourism. Based on a multi-temporal approach using high-resolution satellite images, statistical data and field surveys, the urban landscape dynamics of Kargil town are analysed. The total population of this town increased almost tenfold from 1681 in 1961 to 16,338 in 2011, which resulted in an increase in the urban population from 3.7% to 11.6%, while the population of the entire Kargil district only tripled from 45,064 to 140,802 over the same period. Migration from rural villages to Kargil town has been a major cause for the construction and growth of new residential colonies and settlements. The built-up area increased more than ninefold from 0.25 km2 (1.3%) to 2.30 km2 (11.7%) between 1965 and 2020. During the same period, irrigated land and hygrophilous vegetation increased considerably from 4.51 km2 (23.0%) to 8.56 km2 (43.6%) due to the construction of new water channels. Similarly, the barren area decreased significantly from 14.88 km2 (75.8%) to 8.78 km2 (44.7%) between 1965 and 2020. Moreover, the massive increase in tourist arrivals has led to the construction of more hotels, guesthouses and travel agencies. These key factors play a significant role in the emergence, growth and development of this high-mountain town.

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Section: Post-independence Periodmentioning

confidence: 99%

Dynamics of Mountain Urbanisation: Evidence from the Trans-Himalayan Town of Kargil, Ladakh, India

Hussain

Schmidt

Nüsser

2023

Land

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“…Like the colonial relief funds, this programme aimed to restore survivors' pre‐disaster social and economic status relative to one another. In Ladakh, a militarised region which shares a contested border with China, the army still shapes local disaster governance according to security priorities, as the colonial army did in Quetta (Field and Kelman, 2018; Field, 2020).…”

Section: Contingency Cooperation and Postcolonial Legaciesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Recovering the status quo: tipping points and earthquake aftermaths in colonial India

Haines

2023

Disasters

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Scholars of disaster politics debate how far natural hazards cause or catalyse political change. This paper builds on recent scholarship on tipping points and social contracts to argue that two case studies of historical earthquakes in 1930s British‐colonised India invite a focus on the dynamics of cooperation and conflict between state and non‐state actors. Officials of the colonial state and its nationalist rivals cooperated after one earthquake even though they otherwise bitterly opposed each other. Cooperation broke down after the second event, just one year later. Yet, in both cases, officials and nationalist leaders shared a broad vision for Indian society, which pushed both sides actively to seek to recover the social and economic status quo ante, preventing potential tipping points from crystallising. These case studies reveal how and why highly fraught social contracts can survive major disasters. The colonial state's transient and reactive approach to disaster governance continued to impact on post‐independence India.

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Research on Politics of Disaster Risk Governance: Where Are We Headed?

Hilhorst¹,

Boersma

Raju

2020

PaG

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This thematic issue aims at unravelling how the global consensus towards a shift to risk reduction and inclusive disaster governance evolves in everyday governance practices, where roles and responsibilities are evolving and negotiated, permeated by politics of power and legitimacy. It identifies three different dimensions of disaster governance. The first is the formal dimension: the way governance arrangements are designed or meant to work. The second is ‘real’ governance: the way in which formal governance arrangements manifest and evolve in actual practice. The third is invisible governance: an amalgam of household and neighbourhood-level activities and networks for disaster response that happen outside of the gaze of the formalized governance arrangements. The 21 articles in this issue address the politics of governance based on thorough empirical work, while theoretically contributing to several themes relating to the politics of disaster governance. The outcomes of the thematic issue are: 1) The three governance dimensions are useful to reveal what the roles and room for manoeuvre is of different actors, including governments, international community, experts, non-state actors and affected communities; 2) Technical solutions for risk reduction and disaster response crucially rely on socio-technical, political, and administrative systems and processes and hence need to be adjusted to the specific context; and 3) The political nature of disaster governance calls for a deeper understanding to advance accountability to affected populations.

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Caught between Paper Plans and Kashmir Politics: Disaster Governance in Ladakh, India

Cited by 3 publications

References 28 publications

Dynamics of Mountain Urbanisation: Evidence from the Trans-Himalayan Town of Kargil, Ladakh, India

Dynamics of Mountain Urbanisation: Evidence from the Trans-Himalayan Town of Kargil, Ladakh, India

Recovering the status quo: tipping points and earthquake aftermaths in colonial India

Research on Politics of Disaster Risk Governance: Where Are We Headed?

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