Farm

The inhospitable Indus

This photo essay illustrates how the historic river offers sustenance to the residents of the high Himalayas. Could 'development' end its age-old relationship with the people of Ladakh?

Author : Chicu Lokgariwar, Keith Goyden

Flowing through Tibet, northern India and Pakistan, the Indus is the western-most major river of the Indus-Ganga-Brahmaputra basin. This basin extends over most  of South Asia from the Himalayas to the Vindhyas, excluding Peninsular India, and carries the rain that falls in this region to the Indian Ocean. From its source to the sea, the Indus travels 3,180 kilometers, and drains 1,165,000 square kilometers. From Tibet, the river flows through Ladakh, where it meets its first major tributary- the Zanskar river.

The villages here are entirely dependent on the river for sustaining their lives. The Indus provides water for irrigation and livestock, brings silt to base the fields upon, and feeds the springs that provide drinking water. There is speculation that climate change could cause the glaciers that feed the river to dry up and greatly diminish river flows. What will this mean to the people and the land of Ladakh?

Though fairly modest near its origins, the river Indus owes its name to the word 'Sindhus', which was the term used by the Central Aryan peoples when they migrated towards India. The Indus to them appeared such a wide body of water, that they referred to it as the ocean, or Sindhus.(Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 1, p. 5) Here, the Indus meets its first major tributary, the Zanskar.
Like the Ganga, the Indus pre-dates the Himalayas. It also marks the north-western boundary of these mountains (Imperial Gazetteer of India, v. 1, p. 15). For much of its 3,000 kilometer length, the Indus retains its nature as a mountain river by flowing through gorges as seen at Skurbuchan village in the photo.
Ladakh boasts some of the highest cultivated areas in the world. Most of these areas lie along the Indus and are irrigated by her waters .The fields in the photo, at Santakhchan illustrate the contrast between the irrigated fields and the great cold desert beyond.
Nimu, pictured here, is a testament to the landforming powers of the Indus. Alluvial plateaus such as at Nimu are important oases of fertile, flat land for farming and horticulture.
Poplars, apricot trees and cultivated fields all depend on the Indus. By making this cultivation in the lap of the Himalayas possible, the Indus sustains human life in Ladakh.
The farmers of Ladakh have long been respected for their comparative success in agriculture in a region popularly deemed 'inhospitable'. The hardworking and knowledgeable Ladakhis grow wheat, barley, peas, beans, buckwheat, millets and turnips as well as fodder crops on terraced fields as seen here at Nurla.
The soil of Ladakh was formerly the floor of the Tethys sea. It's sandy nature, as seen here at Skurbuchan, is exacerbated by the near-total lack of vegetation to add organic content to the soil. For farming to be successful, regular application of manure and compost is essential.
While some ploughing is done by yak-cow crossbreeds known as Dzo, most work is done manually. Here farmers irrigate and hoe their fields prior to sowing.The bunds and terraces are built using stones taken from the fields, which also makes the soil easier to cultivate.
Not a drop is wasted. Irrigation channels are routed so that they water fruit trees on their way to the fields.
From the main channel (lined with concrete), subsidiary earth channels lead to the fields. The poplars in the backround multiply new branches growing out of mature stumps. This practice of repeatedly harvesting a tree is called coppicing and is a sustainable way of obtaining timber and fuel.
This confined and turbulent flow unfortunately has attracted the attention of dam-builders. India has plans to build three hydroelectric projects on the Indus in its upper reaches, despite this being seen as a violation of the Indus Water Treaty (http://archives.dawn.com/archives/15445). The dams are being justified as 'run of the river' projects; residents of the Central and Eastern Himalayas are all too aware of the devastation caused by these. One of the three planned dams is at Dumkhar, very close to the stretch in the photograph.

The Indus Water Treaty (1960) regulates the sharing of water between India and Pakistan. Among other provisions, it limits the construction of dams on the tributaries to the Indus as well as the river itself.  Due in part to the Indus Water Treaty and in part to the 'inhospitable' terrain, the Indus has not been subject to the same misguided 'development' as some of the other Himalayan rivers. Is this about to change? Do the people of Ladakh, and maybe the other beings dependent on this river, have a say in its future?

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