Politics and Autonomy: Insights from the Ladakh region

This paper seeks to reflect on the complexities within the discourse of development and relating the same with the nature of state functioning in the Indian context. It seeks to elucidate on the inter-linkages that development has had with the other factors like politics, identity and the discourse of autonomy. It presents the argument of development and its association with the other political factors in the empirical case of Ladakh, explicating as to how the assertion of specific identities becomes a tool of achieving the universal goal of development which is reflected in the demand for political autonomy in order to address the imbalances in development patterns across regions. It seeks to look into aspects of legitimacy of the State of Jammu and Kashmir in its political relations with the Ladakh region and how the same were shaped keeping in context the trajectory of development of the Ladakh region. This is followed by the further strengthening of the Ladakhi identity to get their demands for development imbalances addressed. The genesis of the same being found in the nature of the State of Jammu and Kashmir and its homogeneous model of development uniformly implemented across the entire region which resulted in the further strengthening of the linkages between development and identity demonstrated in its assertion of greater regional autonomy.