Abstract
The paper introduces a field research conducted in North-West India in 2012, focused on education as a development strategy and its impacts in the context of eastern Ladakh with a special orientation on nomadic communities of the Changthang region. Living in a high altitude cold desert, Ladakhis developed a specific culture over the years, rich in traditional ecological knowledge that enabled people to live sustainably in harsh climatic conditions.
Recently, many changes have come to Ladakh. One of the innovations is the introduction of a formal compulsory education which aims to bring many benefits to the local society.
However, factors like lack of education goals and insufficient grounding in a local context within the state curriculum make a formal education in Ladakh full of contradictions. Among other effects, the loss of traditional ecological knowledge has been widely criticised.
The situation is even more dire in case of nomadic people from the Changthang region near the Chinese border whose children stay in hostels of nomadic residential schools for most of the year, educated towards a very different, urban lifestyle. The aim of this work was to investigate whether the locals (mostly government teachers, students and other people involved in the education) were aware of these discrepancies and to collect possible ideas for a change or a mitigation of these problems.
To achieve these goals, a field research was conducted from August to October 2012. The research was based on a qualitative approach with elements of action research.