Last September, a political protest in Leh went awry. Four young people were killed in police action against a demonstration that turned violent; dozens more, including police personnel, were injured. It was a monumental tragedy. A judicial inquiry was ordered. Ladakh was shrouded in grief. A year later, the process of political dialogue and engagement with Ladakh’s leadership continues. The tangible progress deserves to be judged on its substance, not rhetoric.

The roots of Ladakh’s political demands go back much further than last September. Ladakh was once its own kingdom, sitting astride the Silk Route. Its sovereignty ended in 1834, when Dogra forces overran the region, subsuming it into the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir. After 1947, Ladakh’s Buddhist and Shia communities found themselves governed from Srinagar, in a political system centred largely around the Kashmir Valley. A political movement took birth, demanding direct rule from Delhi. In 2019, the central government acquiesced, carving Ladakh out as a Union Territory. It was a significant concession, even if it did not settle every grievance.

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Ladakh’s population is more heterogeneous than is imagined. Buddhists of Tibetan descent, Muslim communities including Baltis, Sunnis, Shias and Noorbakhshis, and Christian, Hindu and Sikh minorities are spread across 60,000 sq km, sandwiched in the borderlands between Pakistan and China. Leh and Kargil have been the fulcrums of administration. In response to demands for more decentralised governance, five new districts have been created, each slated to get an elected Hill Development Council. Preparations are underway for panchayat elections. The goal is to ensure a genuine devolution of administrative and political power.

What is not in dispute is how much the government has delivered. Roads now reach valleys that were once a full day’s hard travel away. Sustained investment in border infrastructure has transformed connectivity. The 13 km-long Zojila tunnel is nearing completion. The world’s longest high-altitude single-tube tunnel will end Ladakh’s winter isolation. Nearly 20 flights land in Leh daily each summer. A new airport terminal and a second airstrip at Nubra are in the works. Telecom connectivity is expanding rapidly under the Bharat Net programme. In remote villages where winter temperatures fall 60 degrees below freezing point, the power grid is finally arriving this year. Families will now be spared the annual ritual of migration to the plains. Schools and public institutions are being made winter-friendly. Nearly every rural household has piped water under the Jal Jeevan Mission. New reservoirs, Him Sarovars, are being built to store meltwater as glaciers retreat. This is a progressive mitigation measure against the growing threat of climate change. The government is proactively supporting the rural farm economy, focused around pashmina, apricot and dairy sectors. Floriculture and sea buckthorn cultivation are getting special attention. Tourism is booming. This is a testament to solid development.

The current negotiations between Ladakh’s representatives and the Centre revolve around a single demand: A democratic structure that protects land, jobs, culture and a fragile environment. The Centre’s approach has been one of accommodation and constructive engagement. A new constitutional arrangement has been offered under Article 371, with a directly elected UT-level body holding legislative, executive and financial powers. This sui-generis model will ensure constitutional and legal safeguards for land and culture. It is an imaginative blueprint without precedent, tailored specifically to Ladakh’s circumstances. On jobs, Ladakh already has 95 per cent reservation of local positions for residents (including educationally backward classes and economically weaker sections). Nearly 5,000 youngsters have been given government employment and thousands more are set to be recruited. Ladakh administrative and police services have been mooted to ensure that core administrative jobs are handled by local youth. These are the kind of concrete, negotiated commitments that take time to design properly and are easy to undervalue because they were not won through confrontation.

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It would be facile to read last September’s violence as a failure of the political process. Patience is not a glamorous virtue in politics. It earns no headlines. Political negotiations take time. Consensus-building is a slow, painstaking process, which needs strong foundations of trust and a spirit of accommodation. It is easy to fall into a delusional trap that agitations alone lead to solutions. There must be candid acknowledgement that the Centre has moved further and faster on Ladakh’s behalf in six years than in the preceding seven decades. Ladakh’s own leadership must extend the courtesy of the same patience it is asking Delhi to show.

The author is chief secretary, Union Territory of Ladakh. Views are personal