School Education in Ladakh

School Education in Ladakh:Responses to People’s Aspirations is an account of an education reform initiative in Ladakh — called Operation New Hope; it is also an account of the growth of an organization — Students’Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL). The narrative account, often mixed with reflective comments, is almost a journey in the life of a civil society group that recognized limits to partnership with local self-governance processes. The limits are often laid down by the benefits that the governance processes can sight in the work of a civil society group; sharp boundaries are drawn at “points of embarrassment” that the civil society incursions into development management can create for any constituent of the governance processes. Manpower engaged for the governance processes readily slips into state of fossilization of old behaviours; any new behaviours advocated by civil society action constitute a threat.

It is heartening though that the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council embraced the Operation New Hope as a concept and as a system; the regret still lies in the fact that the civil society group could not find continuing space for its work.