Ladakh is strategically located between China and Pakistan. As a measure to win hearts and minds of locals, discuss the Border Area Development Programmes (BADP) by the Central Government and civic actions by the Army. Also discuss demand of promulgation of provision of the Sixth Schedule of constitution for Ladakh.

Why Ladakh

Ladakh sits between Chinese-held Aksai Chin and Pakistan-occupied Gilgit-Baltistan, with the Line of Actual Control on one flank and the Line of Control on the other. In such terrain the resident population is the first line of surveillance and the first casualty of alienation, which is why civil administration and border security converge here.

Border Area Development Programme

• A centrally sponsored scheme of the Ministry of Home Affairs, running since 1986-87, now covering border blocks across seventeen states and union territories.
• Funds are allocated on a formula weighting length of international border, population and area of the border block.
• Priority is participatory: district-level committees with local representatives select works, so the programme is meant to respond to felt need rather than departmental plans.
• Works covered: link roads, footbridges, small bridges, drinking water, primary health infrastructure, school buildings and hostels, community centres, solar lighting, sports facilities and skill development.
• Explicit purpose: to meet special developmental needs of people living in remote and inaccessible border areas and to give them a stake in remaining there, since depopulated borders are harder to hold.
• The Vibrant Villages Programme (2023) now supplements BADP along the northern border specifically, targeting connectivity, livelihoods and reverse migration in identified villages.

Army civic action

• Operation Sadbhavana, the flagship civic action programme in Ladakh and Jammu and Kashmir: schools including the Army Goodwill Schools, scholarships, national integration tours, women's empowerment centres and vocational training.
• Medical outreach through military hospitals and camps in areas where civil health infrastructure cannot reach, and veterinary care for pastoralist livestock.
• Infrastructure support: road connectivity through the Border Roads Organisation, bridging, and restoration after avalanche and flood.
• Disaster response, where the Army is frequently the only agency able to reach in winter.
• Employment and integration: the Ladakh Scouts, recruited locally, combine operational value with livelihood and belonging.
• The limits are worth stating: civic action is discretionary, unit-dependent and not a substitute for civil administration, and it can blur the civil-military line if it becomes the primary channel of governance.

The Sixth Schedule demand

• After the reorganisation of 2019, Ladakh became a union territory without a legislature, losing the representation it previously had in the Jammu and Kashmir assembly.
• The demand, pressed by the Leh Apex Body and the Kargil Democratic Alliance, has four parts: statehood, Sixth Schedule protection, a public service commission with job reservation for locals, and separate Lok Sabha seats for Leh and Kargil.
• Why the Sixth Schedule: it would create autonomous district and regional councils with legislative and executive powers over land, forests, water, agriculture, village administration, inheritance and social custom, protecting a population that is over 90 per cent tribal from outside land acquisition and demographic change.
• The constitutional position. The Sixth Schedule under Article 244(2) applies to tribal areas in Assam, Meghalaya, Tripura and Mizoram. Extending it to Ladakh requires a constitutional amendment. The National Commission for Scheduled Tribes recommended inclusion in 2019.
• What has been offered instead: reservation in direct recruitment raised substantially for locals, official-language recognition, reservation for women and Scheduled Tribes in the hill councils, and continued dialogue through the high-powered committee. Detail in our notes on the 2025 quota regulations and the Ladakh settlement question.

Conclusion

BADP and Army civic action address the material deficit and are necessary. They do not address the representational deficit, which is what the Sixth Schedule demand is actually about. Winning hearts and minds in a border district ultimately requires the residents to have a decisive say over their land and resources, and that is a constitutional question rather than a developmental one.