Snow Leopards, Checkpoints, and Roads: Negotiating Selective Legibility in Hemis National Park, India

Abstract

Established with the goal of protecting endangered species, Hemis National Park in Ladakh, India, is a hotspot for trekkers and wildlife tourism. A process of selective legibility operates inside the park, as the conditions that make wildlife legible to the state are effectively rendering residents illegible because the building of infrastructure inside the park is either denied or delayed. Today, residents’ subsistence is largely predicated on the conditions of illegibility, as tourism-related incomes have displaced traditional agro-pastoral activities. Residents, however, have strong aspirations for roads, the absence of which complicates life within the national park. As the developing road network threatens to disturb residents’ subsistence, they developed a checkpoint, a device that recreates conditions of illegibility by preventing vehicle traffic inside the park. Ultimately, this article calls for attention to the creative ways communities negotiate their relationship with the state when facing a governance over space that leaves them marginalised.

Keywords:

• Wilderness
• Conservation
• Infrastructure
• Ladakh
• India

In October 2018, a resident of Sku, a village in Hemis National Park in Ladakh in the Indian Himalayas, published an open letter in Stawa, a local periodical, titled ‘Need for checkpoints in Hemis National Park’. The letter was addressed to the Chief Executive Councillor and Chairman of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh, which administers the district that the park falls under. It was also carbon copied to several local organisations.¹ Road construction to connect communities inside the park was underway and the author was concerned with the detrimental effects this would have on sustainability in this area dedicated to conservation. Without checkpoints, the man feared, the heavy traffic would disturb the local wildlife. Free circulation would also have a significant impact on incomes earned by local residents by rendering homestays and other tourism-related occupations such as porterage work redundant. While the letter recognised that roads answer residents’ desires for better connectivity to access health and education services, the author was asking for a clear regulation and suggested that use of roads be forbidden to tourist vehicles and motorbikes. For this to be implemented, the man was calling for the installation of checkpoints at three specific places where the park is now connected to the road network: at the bridge of Chilling (on the road to Markha Valley), at Zingchen (on the road to Rumbak), and at Martselang (on the road to Shang Sumdo and Chogdo).

While there are no indications that the author was presenting his request in the name of a group of park residents, discussions over the installation of checkpoints among residents had been ongoing for some time, as suggested in the letter’s opening lines: ‘This is to bring to your kind attention that nothing has been done yet by the relevant authorities to meet the requests of Hemis National Park inhabitants to install checkpoints’. The author points out the failure to install a checkpoint at the bridge of Chilling, although there is no mention of the organisation that committed to this. The letter was also circulated on social media via Facebook and led to parallel conversations that took a polemic turn when a non-local activist accused some of the organisations mentioned in the letter of their lack of support. Among these was the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust. Its director took to social media quickly to explain that the organisation had been wrongly implicated, considering the legislative and executive processes in the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The letter and the ensuing frictions between different actors in the public sphere are testimony of the different interests at stake with respect to road building within Hemis National Park. But what interests us here is not so much the conflict between these various social actors in the public sphere associated with infrastructure development but, rather, the conundrum it creates among local residents. As the process of fieldwork would later reveal, for the park residents, the building of a road network was the culmination of years of appealing to the state for better connectivity. Yet the developing road network was also a source of anxiety because of life circumstances associated with living in a national park. The traditional agro-pastoralist subsistence of Hemis National Park residents has lost its centrality over the years, and today, a significant proportion of household incomes inside the park come from tourism-related activities. Many families own pack animals, such as donkeys and horses, used to carry trekkers’ equipment inside the park. Other families operate homestays, and some find employment as cooks, porters, or guides.

How do residents of a national park attempt to resolve the tensions emerging from a subsistence predicated on wilderness, of which a road network is emerging as an antithesis? In this article, we theorise the checkpoint of Zingchen in Hemis National Park as a mundane infrastructure and an ethnographic lens through which to consider how residents are creatively negotiating state governance over space in an area dedicated to conservation, something that has come to define their household economy. James Scott’s approach to legibility and state-building is helpful in thinking about the rearrangement of nonhuman life in this part of Ladakh. As legibility is central to statecraft, according to Scott, populations and state spaces should be controlled, simplified, and standardised. This logic of statecraft includes, in its sway, the legibility of agriculture and forestry (Scott 1998, 2). Building on Scott’s work to analyse conservation, Peter J. Brosius and Diane Russell (2003, 48) extend this idea to nature more generally and point out that if for Scott, legibility is the ‘central problem of statecraft’ (Scott 1998, 2), ‘[i]t is also the central problem of conservation’. In Hemis National Park, however, there is greater concern to render legible the wildlife population than the human population. The rise of wildlife conservation and the establishment of Hemis National Park have given the state a better understanding of the wildlife population inside the park, from the number of individuals, to their behaviour and their interaction with humans, the ultimate goal being that of raising wildlife populations and preventing the extinction of endangered species.

Drawing on some of the reflections of Scott on state territorialisation, we consider how conservation and tourism activities inside the park are predicated on a process of legibility. However, legibility inside the park is not an all-encompassing condition but, rather, selective, one that concerns nonhuman species, more precisely, wildlife. This is the outcome of governance over space that attends to a conservation agenda but, in the process, neglects popular needs. Here, more than the simple object that it is, namely a corroded metal rod that functions as a lever, we argue that the checkpoint of Hemis National Park is part of an innovative infrastructure developed by park residents to negotiate their relationship with the state (Figure 1). When activated, the checkpoint shifts from a simple technical object to an infrastructure that enacts the conditions of illegibility for humans who are challenged by roads. In re-creating conditions associated with the absence of roads, it allows park residents to continue to earn from homestays and the service of pack animals, and it prevents vehicle traffic from disturbing wildlife (Figure 2).

Figure 1. The checkpoint of Zingchen in Hemis National Park. Photo by Karine Gagné.

Figure 2. A convoy of horses carrying material for trekkers is ascending the Kongmaru La pass. Photo by Jigmat Lundup.

The rest of this article is organised as follows. First, to examine the checkpoint as an object that reflects the creative agency of a community in the face of state governance over space and allocation of infrastructure, we discuss the checkpoint as a mundane technology. Next, we trace what led to the emergence of the checkpoint, first by contextualising the establishment of Hemis National Park and then by discussing the process of wildlife territorialisation that takes place inside its boundaries before describing the ensuing conditions of illegibility for local residents. The last section examines the checkpoint as a simple and mundane infrastructure, focusing on its operation. We conclude by discussing residents’ ever-changing interest in checkpoints and suggest that the checkpoint of Zingchen, despite no longer being in operation, still exerts leverage for engaging the state and reflects the agency of a Himalayan community marginalised by state governance over space (Figure 3).

Figure 3. Tourists waiting to capture images of the elusive snow leopard in Ladakh. Photo by Jigmat Lundup.

A Mundane Infrastructure

In the past decades, the Himalayas have seen the proliferation of infrastructure building—ranging from roads, railways, and dams—as the region becomes an apparent regional ‘resource frontier’, a place where resource commodification takes place along with spatial control supported by emerging institutional orders (Rasmussen and Lund 2018). Linked to changing priorities in national development and the integration of frontier spaces for trans-Himalayan trade, resource extraction, and geopolitical concerns, these projects are associated with important ecological, social, and political changes taking place at the local level (Demenge 2015; Huber 2019; Murton 2021; Murton and Lord 2020). As scholars have demonstrated, large infrastructure projects can be profoundly alienating for communities and have been, throughout the Himalayas, the subject of contestation (Apostolopoulou and Pant 2022; Gergan 2020; Huber and Joshi 2015). The selective provision of infrastructure in the Himalayas also marginalises communities (Gohain 2019). For instance, road building in Himalayan borderland contexts may prioritise geopolitical and economic imperatives and neglect the provision of basic infrastructure and thus popular needs in certain areas (Gagné 2022; Gohain 2019).

What agency do communities of the Himalayas have as they confront forms of state governance over space that leave them marginalised? This article calls for attention to the creative ways in which communities negotiate their relationships with the state and what it reveals about the agency of communities facing exclusionary state logics of infrastructure provision. Here, a focus on practices and experiences related to infrastructure in the everyday—what Stephen Graham and Collin McFarlane (2015) refer to as ‘infrastructural lives’—and on small-scale mundane infrastructure, provides a vantage point on how a community ingeniously addresses the predicaments associated with a spatial politics of infrastructure building that intersects with a governance over space that denies them or delays access to infrastructure.

To make sense of the mediating function of the checkpoint, it is useful to refer to the burgeoning literature on the anthropology of the state in post-colonial India, which has shed light on how citizens contend with state practices. At the core of how people navigate their needs and requests lies the interaction with the technology of governance, which is bureaucracy, a prominent channel for state influence (Mathur 2016). Where structural violence is produced through bureaucratic practices (Gupta 2012), a focus on the materiality of everyday interactions with bureaucracy sheds light on persistent class, gender, or caste discrimination. In particular, scholars have demonstrated how bureaucratic documents are of central significance in everyday state–society interactions as they mediate marginalised individuals’ relationships with the state, whether through its actors or institutions (Cody 2009; Shinde 2016). Documents such as job cards or ration cards (and many more) and their obtention provide a window into the arbitrariness and complexity of the Indian bureaucracy. Yet citizens who are left marginalised by these processes are not despondent. What emerges from ethnographies of state practices is that citizens are actively and creatively negotiating access to and engagement with the state by mobilising various tactics, from communicative modalities, affective performances, or drawing on patronage and kin networks (Carswell, Chambers, and De Neve 2019; Carswell and De Neve 2020; Cody 2009; Shinde 2016; Mitchell 2014). Certainly, such political mediation is laden with the reproduction of inequalities (Witsoe 2012). But what interests us here is how mundane tactics of state mediation that facilitate interactions between individuals and the state show that marginalised individuals are, as Christopher Fuller and John Harriss (2001, 25) remark, quite practical in how they are ‘using the “system” as best they can’ (see also Turner, this issue).

Aligning with this perspective on materiality, namely viewing documents as the intersection between individuals and state bureaucracy and as an integral aspect of citizenship, we regard the checkpoint as an infrastructure created by people to mediate state governance over space and as constitutive of people’s agency. Infrastructures, as Brian Larkin (2013, 329) describes, are ‘matter that enable the movement of other matter’; their singular ontology is such that ‘they are things and also the relation between things’. In other words, roads, railways, pipes, and the myriad other elements of infrastructure that surround us are never just matter, but ‘objects that create the grounds on which other objects operate, and when they do so they operate as systems’ (Larkin 2013, 329). To bring this to our discussion, beyond its physical entity, the checkpoint operates as a system that allows for the monitoring and control of the movement of vehicles inside the park. This system cannot be dissociated from the broader system of legibility in which it is inscribed, and which, as we describe below, parses between wildlife and residents to render the latter illegible. This brings us to another key aspect of infrastructures, which, as technical objects, are also deeply affective, as they ‘encode the dreams of individuals and societies and are the vehicles whereby those fantasies are transmitted and made emotionally real’ (Larkin 2013, 333). Here, the checkpoint is a device that allows residents to fulfill their aspirations for roads and preserve their tourism-related incomes by mediating a system of legibility.

Our approach to the checkpoint as mundane infrastructure centres on its development by ordinary people to mediate everyday life circumstances that are associated with the governance of a national park. Appreciating the checkpoint for more than a seemingly anecdotal infrastructure requires attention to minor and improvisational infrastructure projects. The reflections from STS scholarship that pay attention to mundane infrastructure are productive here. Examining technologies from what are often considered peripheral spaces in imaginaries about development, scholars have demonstrated how colonial and postcolonial accounts tend to erase or undermine vernacular usage and the production of technology. In their most insidious form, such accounts depict particular places as devoid of technologies and peoples as devoid of technological agency (Hecht 2012; Mavhunga 2014). The history of colonialism is indeed replete with examples where such an attitude justified exploitative labour practices, and its persistence manifests today in various contemporary practices (Lehuedé 2023; Marijsse and Mwisha 2022).

The idea that innovation and technical novelties are exogenous to peripheral spaces is not unfamiliar to scholarship on the Himalayas, which has long erased and discredited local knowledge and practices. For instance, the much-criticised Theory of Himalayan Environmental Degradation is a narrative that questionably puts local people’s practices at fault for environmental crisis (Guthman 1997). In the Himalayas, this has inscribed itself in a long legacy of marginalising Indigenous communities. Similarly, accounts of colonial explorers in the Himalayas are often couched in self-aggrandising language, with little reference to the skills and knowledge of local guides and porters, who were fundamental to travelling parties. These accounts are also replete with descriptions of local communities couched in patronising language and dismissive of local practices and attitudes.² This exclusionary and discriminatory tendency persists in contemporary research and interventions in the Himalayas, from the production of climate knowledge (Chakraborty et al. 2021) to disaster management (Gagné 2019; Gergan 2020), and the development of infrastructure projects (Lord, Drew, and Gergan 2020; Gergan and McCreary 2022; Huber 2019).

An alternative narrative on infrastructure and innovation requires decentring the common emphasis on the industrial, high-tech, and spectacular, and recognising technologies of everyday innovation, or what Clapperton Mavhunga (2014, 7–8) defines as ‘the means and ways with which ordinary people engage in creative activities directed toward solving their problems and generating values relevant to their needs and aspirations’. Mapping the checkpoint, from the conditions that led to its emergence and its operation, allows us to uncover how infrastructure and human agency meet to address forms of exclusion with respect to infrastructure development. As detailed below, by halting vehicle traffic within the park, the checkpoint alleviates, to some extent, the predicament faced by the park’s residents. It effectively prevents the pursuit of roads from disrupting the crucial illegibility system for residents’ subsistence and for wildlife to thrive. Simultaneously, it ensures the continuity of employment linked to tourism.

Species and Legibility: The Establishment of Hemis National Park

This article builds on ethnographic research and interviews conducted in 13 villages inside Hemis National Park between 2021 and 2023.³ Hemis National Park is situated to the south of Leh, the capital city of Ladakh Union Territory.⁴ The park has an area of about 4,500 sq km.⁵ There are 15 villages in the park and a population of about 1,600 inhabitants, whose subsistence has traditionally been based on agro-pastoralism (Chandola 2012, 65; Jackson, Wangchuk, and Dadul 2003). Hemis National Park was established in 1981 by the Jammu and Kashmir Government under Section 17 of the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1978 (Chandola 2012, 34). The creation of Hemis National Park is intricately linked to species conservation efforts. The pre-existing Jammu and Kashmir Game and Preservation Act of 1942 regulated the hunting of wildlife and grazing in the Game Reserves of the state (Department of Wildlife Protection, Government of Jammu and Kashmir n.d., 4). Despite this Act, sport hunting of wildlife was a popular activity during British rule and after the independence of India (Chandola 2012). Rampant wildlife hunting—especially by the army—resulted in the devastation of habitat and near-extinction of many of India’s prominent wild species (Fox and Nurbu 1990). The need for new conservation legislation gave rise to the Jammu and Kashmir Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1978. The establishment of land as sanctuaries, national parks, game reserves, and closed areas was a top priority under the 1978 Act and eventually led to the creation, in 1981, of Hemis National Park (Department of Wildlife Protection, Government of Jammu and Kashmir n.d.).

Hemis National Park is home to threatened species requiring conservation under Schedules I and II of the Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 (Jackson and Wangchuk 2000). This includes subspecies of wild sheep and goats (blue sheep, or bharal, argali, urial, ibex), and the snow leopard, one of the most famous and captivating vulnerable species, garnering worldwide conservation support as one of the ‘last remaining icons of wild nature’ (Hussain 2019, 8). Surveys on the relative abundance of the endangered animal, which is listed as vulnerable in the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List, determined that Ladakh, including Hemis National Park, was the best habitat for snow leopards that had been surveyed in India (Fox and Nurbu 1990, 71). With its establishment, Hemis National Park saw the rise of state-sponsored scientific studies of the snow leopard and its prey (Fox and Nurbu 1990, 71). The scientific approach to conservation has consolidated over the years, with governmental and non-governmental organisations involved in the careful monitoring of the wildlife population through different methods and technologies such as camera traps (Jackson et al. 2006). Tracking the main targeted species, the elusive snow leopard, remains a challenge, but studies suggest that conservation efforts have borne fruit: in a study published in 2006, Jackson et al. reported that Hemis National Park may contain up to 175 snow leopards, a substantial increase from the 50–75 individuals estimated by Joseph Fox and Chering Nurbu (1990) about 15 years prior.

Scholarship on conservation and the creation of exclusive spaces such as national parks have described cases of ‘fortress conservation’, an approach associated with the eviction of local communities and systematic dispossession (Brockington 2002). Conservation has often been associated with exclusionary spatial policies under which original residents’ presence and livelihood conflict with a construct of wilderness. Accordingly, original residents will face dispossession, either by seeing their subsistence activities severely limited, or by forced displacement (Badola and Hussain 2003; Neumann 1998; Gurung 2022). Yet as William Cronon (1996) famously pointed out, the idea of wilderness as irreducible to the nonhuman is an invention.

The establishment of Hemis National Park did not entail restrictions on traditional agropastoral activities, and residents of the area were never forced to relocate.⁶ What is described by residents, however, resonates with dispossession and takes a different form—that of negation. The preservation of the park’s wild character, and apprehension over development inside the park, have concerned conservationists since its establishment. The Department of Wildlife Protection⁷ has long opposed the building of a road through the Zanskar Gorge and feared that the building of roads to link villages inside the park would alter conservation values in certain areas of the park (Fox and Nurbu 1990, 79–80). Thus, for residents, the issue at stake is not what has been taken away from them through the park’s establishment, but rather what they are barred from accessing.

Wildlife Territorialisation

The notion of territorialisation has been mobilised extensively in scholarship on conservation to capture its common Janus-face, dispossession. Conservation as territorialisation takes place when state actors enact strategies for protecting biological resources to control and regulate a space or appropriate valuable resources (Bluwstein and Lund 2018; Peluso 1993). Even when implemented in the name of Indigenous territorial rights and environmental conservation, protected areas may reflect a state’s territorial ambitions and consolidate a state’s control over resources in Indigenous territories (Sylvander 2021). Extractive practices of territoriality in conservation can also unfold through a range of activities framed as environmentally conscious. One such activity is ecotourism development, which, as scholars have demonstrated, can also be tied to violence, and control over land and resources, and therefore raises questions about social justice (Duffy 2002; Bocarejo and Ojeda 2016). For instance, Jevgeniy Bluwstein’s (2017) study in Northern Tanzania discusses ecotourism in community-based conservation efforts and how ecotourism companies secure access to environments in neoliberal conservation through land appropriation. Overall, territorialising strategies in conservation may be undergirded by policies and measures oriented towards the protection of the environment, but they are also associated with increased state and non-state hegemonic power and dynamics of appropriation.

Less attended in the scholarship on territorialisation through conservation is how the control over spaces produces and reconfigures relationships between humans and nonhumans. For instance, scholarship on human-wildlife conflicts has shown how conservation through the designation of protected areas in India has contributed to reducing tolerance for large wildlife and apex predators and disrupting existing cohabitation (Greenough 2004; Jalais 2011). In fact, as Shafqat Hussain (2019) demonstrates in his study of conservation politics in Pakistan, the thriving of the snow leopard is contingent on human society, as the endangered animal preys on local farmers’ goats for its diet. Thus, conservation interventions should better acknowledge, Hussain argues, multispecies relationships and the key role played by farmers in preserving the iconic endangered species.

What is perhaps more reflective of the dynamics of control over space in Hemis National Park is a process of ‘wildlife territorialisation’, or the increasing centrality of the snow leopard and other wild animals in the life and subsistence of the park’s residents. Thus, territorialisation in Hemis National Park does not rest solely on the creation of the park itself. Importantly, it is accomplished and strengthened by the implications of wildlife in a changing economy. In Hemis National Park, this process is supported by a flourishing tourism industry that revolves around trekking, homestay experiences, and wildlife watching. Ladakh opened to tourism in 1974, just a few years before the park’s establishment, and saw 527 tourist arrivals in Leh District that year (Pelliciardi 2021, 738). Tourism in the district has since grown significantly, with 501,835 tourist arrivals reported by the Tourism Department during 2023. Ladakh has become one of the most sought-after tourist destinations in India, attracting trekkers, hikers, bikers, road trip enthusiasts, photographers, naturalists, and spiritualists (Bhattacharya 2020, 62). Hemis National Park and its conservation activities are benefitting from the ever-growing tourist industry in Ladakh, as are tour operators and local residents. The park’s wild character is promoted by travel agencies to attract clients who are in search of iconic landscapes and the experience of an imagined pristine nature (Bhattacharya 2020). The tourist influx inside the park amounts to an average of 6,000 tourists during the main season, in summer (Badola et al. 2018, 6). Winter tourism, which revolves around watching snow leopards, is also gaining a strong foothold (Geneletti and Dawa 2009) (Figure 2).

Over the years, various organisations have endeavoured to ensure that villagers within the park share some of the benefits of conserving vulnerable species. In the early 2000s, homestays were established inside the national park. The Department of Wildlife Protection has provided households with basic amenities such as furniture and bedding for people to set up their homestays and, along with the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, contributed to training local families in hospitality. The Youth Association for Conservation and Development of Hemis National Park has organised local homestays into a network through which earnings are regulated. Today, most households in Hemis National Park are engaged in tourism activities (Chandola 2012, 85).⁸ Local residents have developed, with time, expertise in wildlife tourism, snow leopard watching, and hospitality. Thus, from work as horsemen, guides, wildlife spotters, or homestay operators, tourism is now central to people’s subsistence inside the park.

The growing popularity of snow leopard tourism is also such that in some villages, revenue associated with the endangered animal has superseded any other source of income. This is the case for Rumbak, a village at the park’s northern entrance. In a conversation, Rumbak’s headman (goba) estimated that 90 per cent of the tourism revenue in his village is associated with the snow leopard. Recalling the growing number of tourists after the village was showcased in documentaries produced by National Geographic and BBC, the man noted that ‘Rumbak is now like a brand area for snow leopard watching’. Residents have capitalised on this new earning opportunity. For instance, villagers inform travel agents in Leh as soon as a snow leopard has made a kill, as the predator will roam around its prey for a few days (Figure 4). This allows travel agents to bring their tourist groups to Rumbak to see and immortalise the elusive beast in action.

Figure 4. A snow leopard and its blue sheep (bharal) prey. Photo by Jigmat Lundup.

The implications of these new economic opportunities on changing relationships with domesticated and wild animals are important. Over the years, pastoralism has been progressively supplanted by tourism-related income. This flourishing economy has brought new ways of relating to wildlife, including the snow leopard. In conversations, several interlocutors emphasised that the snow leopard was a source of income. This is well captured by one man’s comment. In referring to the snow leopard, he said, ‘This is our gold’. Thus, the animal, which used to be a nuisance for villagers because of its sporadic attacks on domesticated animals, is now valuable. As a woman from Rumbak explained, ‘The presence of the snow leopard is a good thing, it brings more tourists. Earlier, the snow leopard was a threat. But now it brings income for the families. The snow leopard is not a concern, but a [source of] prosperity for the villagers’. People emphasised the reduction of human–wildlife conflicts in the village, something they ascribe to very few people (in some villages, none) keeping sheep and goats. Sporadic attacks by snow leopards continue to happen (mainly on calves and foals), but they are not followed by retaliatory killing as was the case in the past. While this may be explained by the compensatory mechanism offered by the Department of Wildlife Protection (Jamwal, Takpa, and Parsons 2019), our interlocutors tended to emphasise the strict rules and sanctions related to wildlife protection and the commodification of the snow leopard. As one man explained, ‘Now villagers know the importance and value of protecting the snow leopard’.

But the process of wildlife territorialisation is such that what makes tourist activities inside the park successful also threatens the ever-decreasing population of domesticated animals. Sheep and goats, which used to be so central to the local economy, have become a hindrance to families busy with the tourist industry. Moreover, people noted that with a reduced workforce to walk to the pastures, animals are often left unattended in their corrals, which makes them an easy target for predators. While some families still keep animals, all our interviewees emphasised how the number is significantly lower than in the past, and a vast majority now keep only draft animals (horses, donkeys, dzos, yaks) and cows. Others reported having sold their sheep and goats in the past 10–20 years.⁹

Despite these changes, pastoralism remains relevant to some families. While some villages like Rumbak benefit significantly from tourism and snow leopard-related income, in other places, especially the less accessible villages inside the park, pastoralism still plays a role in the household economy. For these families, attacks by snow leopards and other predators (wolves, lynxes) are a challenge. Elderly Tsewang Namgyal described how one day he left the pastures above Hangkar because a snow leopard was roaming around his sheep and goats. The predator however followed him to the village and Tsewang Namgyal had to stay awake the entire night because of the threat to his flock. About a decade ago, Padma Chodron, a middle-aged woman from Markha, lost some of her sheep and goats to a snow leopard attack. Villagers are entitled to compensation from the Department of Wildlife Protection when these incidents happen. However, accessing this money can be a challenge. Tsering Tashi from Markha recently lost one of his horses to a snow leopard attack. The man could have received around 10,000 rupees for his loss but decided not to file the claim. As he explained, the cost of travelling to Leh, staying there, and spending money on food renders the compensation worthless.¹⁰

Tsewang Namgyal sold his sheep and goats a few years back, and Padma Chodron did so right after the attack. But like all our interlocutors, they both explained that their decision was due to inadequate labour more than an increasing snow leopard threat. In addition to the work that tourism-related activities entail, there is also a general lack of helping hands in households as a critical mass of youth is currently in boarding schools outside the villages or pursuing college or university education. In this context, taking care of domesticated animals is becoming a real challenge.¹¹ Today, Tsering Tashi keeps about 60 sheep and goats, a fraction of what he kept in the past. At the age of 54, and with nobody in the household to take over the work in the years to come, he knows that he will eventually have to sell his animals.

Enduring Illegibility, or the Condition of Selective Legibility

Many residents became aware that they were living in what had become a national park around a decade ago—at the very time that they decided to formalise their demands for roads.¹² The rules regarding the building of infrastructure inside the park then shed light on what many feel is a general lack of development in the area. Road building could be done only following the issuance of a ‘no objection certificate’ by the Department of Wildlife Protection. In India, this legal document is central to the execution of certain tasks and entails the mobilisation of several government departments. In the context of Hemis National Park, its obtention is further complicated by the fact that road building controverts the mission of the park. Moreover, the very nature of the work—carving a road into a rocky, mountainous terrain and along narrow gorges—is challenging and, in some areas, complicated by restrictions on the use of explosives inside the park. Ultimately, the impact of the Department of Wildlife Protection on the park residents’ agency with respect to the building of infrastructure has, over time, nurtured increasing frustrations. For, in theory, residents of the park need approval from the Department of Wildlife Protection to build any infrastructure, from canals to water their fields to houses or community buildings.¹³

At the time of fieldwork in 2023, six of the 15 villages in the park were connected by roads that could be driven on throughout the year.¹⁴ Depending on the location, the distance from any village to the nearest road ranged from approximately five to 30 kilometres (Chandola 2012, 65). The lack of a road has, according to residents, several negative consequences. It is blamed for the absence of regular teachers in schools, as a position in Hemis National Park often means having to cope with isolation. Therefore, many school-aged children from the area are sent to boarding schools in Leh. Moreover, while there are some health centres in different parts of the park, they are very irregularly staffed. Communication infrastructures that allow mobile or internet connectivity inside the park also remain limited compared to other parts of Ladakh. In 2021, when fieldwork was first conducted, only the village of Chilling had been recently connected to the mobile cellular network. The other villages had access to Digital Satellite Phone Terminals (DSPT), yet several were no longer functional. At 25 rupees per minute, the cost of using DSPT is high for residents, who must limit their usage to emergencies.¹⁵

Building upon Scott’s work, scholars have delved into the connection between infrastructure and legibility. Jean Michaud and Sarah Turner (2017) explore how state initiatives to increase legibility in northern Vietnam’s frontier involve developing tourist infrastructure. However, the execution of the state-sponsored tourism project marginalises and exploits local ethnic minority communities, whose traditional economic activities clash with this restricted high-modernity initiative. Others have considered how the provision (or not) of infrastructure is central to a dialectic of legibility and illegibility in state–society interactions (LaRocco 2020; Uribe 2019). Overall, these studies demonstrate that state power can be exerted through the strategic provision or denial of infrastructure. Moreover, conditions of illegibility can be created through selective provision of infrastructure. This latter extension of Scott’s work, which moves beyond defining legibility solely as the state’s ability to flatten local intricacies and render peoples and environments governable, but now encompasses ‘the purposeful obscuring of these spaces for the sake of capital accumulation’ (LaRocco 2020, 1077), is especially relevant when considering how the park’s mission may obscure the experiences of Hemis National Park residents. In Hemis National Park, this is supported by the technology of governance of the bureaucratic state. Like other such government-created areas for conservation purposes, Hemis National Park rests on an ideal, that is, the ‘notion’ that ‘“nature” can be “preserved” from the effects of human agency by legislatively creating a bounded space for nature’, something which is controlled by a bureaucratic authority (Neumann 1998, 9). Accordingly, human activities inside the delimitation of the national park should not interfere with the ideal of nature that is central to its establishment. Hence, the denial (or long delay) of infrastructure aligns with the park’s mission, namely the flourishing of wildlife. But this agenda for conservation simultaneously obscures the human habitants and their aspirations.

Moreover, while legibility tends to be described as an all-encompassing condition in state spaces where infrastructure projects are strategically deployed, attention to the patchiness of their execution reveals their uneven effects. Speaking of the context of border areas, Martin Saxer, Alessandro Rippa, and Alexander Horstmann (2018, 4) argue that roads ‘create nodes of legibility and state presence, but in the process, they also increase the remoteness and illegibility of border areas outside their immediate scope’ (see also Saxer and Andersson 2019). A similar process takes place within the national park as illegibility emerges from a dialectical relationship with places that are better serviced in terms of infrastructure. Indeed, residents frequently allude to the fact that what makes Hemis National Park feel like a remote place is precisely its lack of infrastructure resources (health, education, communication) that are otherwise available outside the park. Because of the legislation that complicates the building of infrastructure within India’s protected areas, residents are forced to travel outside the park to access such facilities. Although these resources are sometimes available in not-so-distant locations of Ladakh, accessing them is complicated by the very absence of roads.¹⁶ More than any material reconfiguration or restrictions imposed on people’s activities, this is what is experienced as dispossession by residents: while other parts of Ladakh have, in the past decades, seen a proliferation of road networks and mobile connectivity (Gagné 2022), these resources have long remained unavailable to the park’s residents. Overall, the case of the national park demonstrates how illegibility, described in Scott’s (2009) analysis as a tactic of state evasion and the rejection of certain state practices, can also be produced by a selective provision of infrastructure, something which is nonetheless a manifestation of state power (Gohain 2019; LaRocco 2020).

The case of Hemis National Park also demonstrates that legibility and illegibility can occur simultaneously within a given space. In Hemis National Park, infrastructure building is anchored in a selective approach to legibility, one linked to a governance under which roads should not interfere with wild and endangered species. The building of infrastructure is a crucial strategy to render spaces and population legible, Scott (2009, 11) tells us. What makes the wildlife population legible to the state inside the park is the flourishing of a scientific infrastructure, for instance, the installation of camera traps and the work of a network of scientists (Jackson et al. 2006). But for this conservation science to flourish and for the wildlife population to thrive, as per the park’s legislation, the building of infrastructure that caters to popular needs inside the park must remain limited. If we embrace Scott’s argument that infrastructure is central to the process of rendering citizens legible, arguably, inside the park, legibility, as concerned with wildlife and the local environment, is forcing the local inhabitants into a state of illegibility as it entails the limitation or denial of basic infrastructure for park’s residents. For the park’s residents, this is experienced as an unfair prioritisation of needs. As one man put it when reflecting on the implications of the absence of roads for health services, ‘here, villagers are less important than wild animals’. Recalling how the presence of a dying old lynx in the village of Rumbak brought a quick intervention from the Wildlife Department, the man suggested: ‘If a wild animal is ill or dying, the government will send people [from the appropriate department] immediately; if someone is dying and needs to go to the hospital, nobody [from the government] cares’. In sum, illegibility is here emerging as an outcome of an exclusive legibility that distinguishes between humans and wild animals in a territory.

Access to the road network generates strong opinions among park residents who, as fieldwork revealed, were largely in favour of road building.¹⁷ In arguing for the development of roads, residents often evoked the hardship brought by their absence. Depending on where one lives in the national park, at the time when the research was conducted, to reach the main road to Leh, which is, for example, the only way to access most health services, one may need to walk between two and seven hours, and sometimes cross mountain passes. The frustration of many is well captured in this remark by a man from Sumdha Chenmo, who explains, ‘Without a road, we have to carry everything on our back and it is not fair that India got independence more than 70 years ago, but so far, Sumdha has no road and no medical facilities’. The man was also quick to point out that although the issue may be sensitive to conservationists and those involved in the tourist industry, roads, or rather their absence, is a major concern to the inhabitants inside the park. Similarly, a man from Rumbak noted, ‘Only the villagers know how difficult it is not to have a road. How many times do we have to cross the river to reach Leh for a medical emergency? This is also especially difficult for pregnant women and their families’. This perspective aligns with Saxer and Ruben Andersson’s (2019, 143–144) reflection that conditions of remoteness are created not because of complete disconnection but rather through the uneven connectivity of isolated places. For residents, resources are available outside the park, but for too long they have only been accessible at the cost of extreme physical exertion.

The absence of roads is also seen as contributing to rural depopulation. In some instances, family members resettle to Leh, where they have better access to basic necessities. There is also a tangible fear that the lack of connectivity will cause the younger generations to stop farming activities.

As a man from Shingo explained, ‘No road means that over time, the villagers might not stay and ultimately, the villages might die. No road means not much scope for educated children’. The absence of connectivity was also mentioned as a cause for the lack of provision of certain services. A woman from Hangkar explained, ‘We see a government employee, carrying her own baby, walking all the way from where the road ends, and it takes them two days to reach the village. As a woman, I am concerned about the absence of a road, not only for the villagers but also for these employees’.

As scholars have demonstrated, the construction of roads in remote areas sometimes reflects a shared desire by residents to participate in a regional and national economy (Anderson 1989; Bennett 2018). With the flourishing tourism economy inside the park, the desire of Hemis National Park’s residents to access the road network is less an economic imperative but, rather, reflects a wish to both reduce the burden of accessing resources outside the park and preserve the vitality of villages inside the park. However, while park residents expressed a strong desire for better connectivity, they were also concerned about the potential implications of roads on the flourishing tourism economy.

The Checkpoint: Negotiating Selective Legibility

While in favour of building roads, many residents have mixed feelings: while recognising that roads would greatly benefit the communities inside the park, they also feel this would come with an array of undesirable consequences. Concerns are less focused on the snow leopard in particular, and more on the implications of the road on wildlife in general. The pollution brought in by the road would alter the park’s beauty, it was suggested. For instance, since Rumbak was connected by road, there has been an influx of youth coming from Leh. Some stay overnight for camping, and they often end up partying, listening to loud music, and stepping on crops. The garbage they leave is a real nuisance for villagers, who must now organise regular community cleanup campaigns. This, it is feared, will change the park’s overall peaceful atmosphere that makes it a wildlife haven.

The potential impacts of the road on tourism-related incomes are also a source of concern for many. Connectivity is already impacting the duration of treks, as tourists now start their journeys where the road ends. For instance, the Rumbak–Stok trek and the Markha Valley treks used to start from Zingchen, and trekkers would stay overnight in Rumbak. But many are now starting the trek from the village itself and no longer spend the night in Rumbak. The implications of the road for porterage revenue are also a source of concern. The services of horsemen, hired to carry supplies along the trekking route, will become either increasingly redundant or necessary for only a fraction of the days. These changes have already been observed among the communities that are now either connected by road, or close to where the road ends. These same concerns translate into firm opposition to the road among a handful of interlocutors. For families that earn an income strictly from tourism-related activities, the building of the road is a great source of concern. A woman from Sara suggested that the dramatic loss of income due to COVID-19 could foretell how things will go with the roads, and this was anxiety-inducing. Alluding to how roads have put a near stop to trekking routes in other parts of Ladakh, some interlocutors suggested that the same could happen over time with the famous Markha trek.

Desires for roads present an important conundrum, as the vitality of tourist activities is predicated on the very conditions of illegibility for its residents. It was to address this situation that residents came up with the idea of installing checkpoints at the entrance to the park. Discussions about limiting traffic inside the park had been going on before Rumbak was connected by road and were, in fact, accelerated by a poaching incident that led to the killing of a urial, a threatened species. The incident was discovered by a man from Rumbak who came across blood and what appeared to be the hair of a urial in Ushing, an area between Zingchen and Rumbak. The man informed the wildlife guard, who collected a sample. The investigation eventually led to the identification of the culprit, a man with ties to the Indian army. This was a painful reminder of how the army’s presence led to the near decimation of wild species in Ladakh (Fox and Nurbu 1990). With easier park access, villagers feared more poaching incidents. This, along with the other concerns for the implications of the roads, led people to see the need to control movement inside the park.

Villagers reached out to the Department of Wildlife Protection to explain their idea, to which the government organisation saw no objection. However, the erection and operation of the checkpoint would be the responsibility of the villagers. The endorsement was only a verbal agreement, and there was no financial support for the project. The checkpoint at the park entry near Zingchen was installed in 2017. In Zingchen, a group of men asked a road machine operator to dig a hole in the ground so they could install the structure for the checkpoint. Through consultation, villagers agreed that a woman from Zingchen, the single-house village at the very entrance of the park, would monitor the traffic. The woman was also running a parachute café at this location and could, therefore, earn additional income during the long hours spent at the checkpoint. As per the rule established by the villagers of Rumbak and Zingchen, only residents could use the road inside the park, but only on fixed days, to minimise traffic. Tourists and people coming from other parts of Ladakh would need to leave their vehicles at the entrance and walk. Eventually, residents decided that during the peak summer tourist season, even residents would not be allowed to drive on the road, in order not to disturb trekkers.

In all its simplicity, the checkpoint, a minimalist infrastructure employing informal technology, effectively stops one flow, vehicle traffic, to enable another. As roads interfere with a system of legibility, the checkpoint allows the vitality of tourism as an economic system, predicated on the commodification of nature and which connects a network of homestays, pack animals, guides, cooks, and porters. Scholarship on infrastructure from the Global South has emphasised informal activities and how they are shown to palliate where infrastructures are failing their supply function or are absent. From the social relationships that are fundamental to water provision (Anand 2017), to the labouring bodies of waste work (Fredericks 2014; Zhang 2019) and the secondary circuits and informal trading networks of energy supply (Cholez and Trompette 2020), infrastructure is either generating or emerging from informal labour practices and social networks. Such infrastructures can elude a narrow framework such as infrastructure-as-material, for they are unspectacular or lack a material tangibility and, in their operation, diffuse in everyday life (see Turner, this issue). In its operational form, the checkpoint of Hemis National Park is reminiscent of such infrastructure-as-informal-practices. While it may not materialise out of labouring bodies, as a simple infrastructure erected by the park’s residents, it produces a similar function by putting in place a system that ensures the uninterrupted flow of labouring activities and thus the sustained operation of the tourism-related economy within the region. Mundane, it resonates in its articulation with the many technical structures that are not necessarily recognised by authorities or formally organised but have nonetheless ‘embedded within them the techno-rationalities of the state’s governance’ (Zhang 2019, 99). For the checkpoint is not only a physical infrastructure but a system regulating movement within a broader framework of governance over space and resources. Where a conservation agenda dictates access to development resources, it allows the preservation of the very conditions around which the household economy of park’s resident now greatly depends, while fulfilling their aspirations for roads. The checkpoint also empowers residents in relation to tourists as it allows them to control the parameters of how the park’s resources can be enjoyed. Accessing the national park in a motorised vehicle allows tourists to visit many locations within a single day and return without staying overnight. However, if the same visit takes place on foot, tourists invariably need to stay in homestays, thereby contributing to the local economy.

Informal in its operation, the checkpoint is also subject to abandonment, restoration, and expansion. It has neither been sanctioned by authorities nor is it entirely recognised by non-residents of the park, something that makes it amenable to contestation. Indeed, the operation of the checkpoint proved challenging from the start. Non-residents were quick to point out the illegality of the enterprise. While travel agents and guides were generally compliant, daily visitors—youths, Ladakhi wildlife enthusiasts, and people who, for other reasons, had to enter the park—were constantly challenging the rules, which residents had no real legal authority to implement. While the checkpoint was in operation, residents continued to ask for the support of the Department of Wildlife Protection so that the control of traffic would not be controversial. Referring to the challenges of implementing the checkpoint system, the headman of Rumbak explained, ‘The solution lies in the hands of the Wildlife Department, and this is about putting in checkpoints and having the rules apply to everyone’. In fact, a few metres from the installed checkpoints, the Department of Wildlife Protection operates a checkpoint at the park entrance where national park fee payments are monitored. For the residents, this would be the ideal place to control vehicular traffic inside the park.

Debates and difficulties over the checkpoint’s operation subsided with COVID-19, which interrupted tourism activities. The pandemic had a severe toll on park residents’ subsistence. When India reopened to tourists in the spring of 2022, after a hiatus of 19 months, several questions arose over the checkpoint’s operation. Residents were concerned that restrictions on movements inside the park at the Zingchen entrance would encourage tour operators to use the park’s other two entrances, where the idea of installing checkpoints had never materialised. Moreover, without more formal support from the Department of Wildlife Protection, the checkpoint would remain polemical, and its operation challenging. Eventually, residents decided to cease operating the checkpoint.

Conclusion

The Zingchen checkpoint in Hemis National Park offers a lens onto how a community ingeniously implemented infrastructure using simple technology that mediates conditions brought by a governance over space predicated on selective legibility. Checkpoints are nodes that mediate space and not something that typically elicits innovation. As demarcation points, they are often the locus of the display of state power, and target human bodies. In the words of anthropologist Pradeep Jeganathan (2018, 404), checkpoints are imbued with ‘a particular logic of the border; the interrogation of biopolitical identity’. But inasmuch as technologies must be considered as situated practices (Gil 2022; Mavhunga 2017), the checkpoint erected by the residents of Hemis National Park departs, in its function and operation, from the arbitrary discrimination and violence typical of state attempts to mediate space (Ghosh 2019; Kelly 2006). It is nonetheless imbricated in state power and creatively addresses the forms of exclusions associated with the politics it imposes on residents.

Rapid infrastructural growth in the Himalayas, encapsulated by roads, railways, and dams, often tends to prioritise geopolitical and economic agendas over basic local need. The case of Hemis National Park demonstrates how in Ladakh, the selective provisioning of infrastructure amidst a conservation agenda also tends to perpetuate marginalisation. The absence of roads engenders alienation within communities residing inside the confines of the national park. But residents of the park creatively addressed this situation. Here the checkpoint is not a mere artifact but, rather, a ‘political technology’ (Shinde 2016). As the road network expands within the national park, the checkpoint can be appreciated for how it stands as an embodiment of citizen governance, intersecting with the state’s conservation-focused agenda for the park area. Like the tactics of mediation deployed by marginalised individuals confronted with the opaqueness of the Indian bureaucracy—tactics that are ‘bringing people to the state and the state to people’ (Carswell, Chambers, and De Neve 2019, 600)—the residents of the national park are using a technology, a checkpoint, to tinker with state governance. Their approach bears resemblance to the tactics employed by the Vaddera stonecutters, as examined by Philippe Messier in this special issue. These individuals face escalating camera surveillance in Hyderabad but persist in developing social and technical adaptations within this infrastructure (Messier 2024). Similarly, the strategy of the checkpoint developed by the residents may not overrule the state governance prevailing inside the park. But in a practical way, the park’s residents are operating within this system to the best of their capacity so that their aspirations for road infrastructure do not compromise the tourism economy on which their subsistence is now predicated, and which is intricately linked to a system of legibility.

Emphasising the checkpoint as a mundane yet significant infrastructure also underscores the importance of minor, locally developed infrastructure projects that often get overlooked in dominant narratives of development. These everyday interactions are crucial as they illustrate marginalised individuals’ resourcefulness in navigating state governance over space. Such alternative narratives also allow us to appreciate the role of everyday innovation in addressing local needs and aspirations and challenge historical and contemporary scholarly tendencies that undermine local innovation and knowledge in peripheral spaces like the Himalayas.

While no longer in operation, the issues that the checkpoint was addressing continue to prevail. Residents still apprehend the loss of income associated with the presence of roads and resent people using the park’s resources without any benefits for villagers. An incident that took place during the winter of 2023 reminded them of this possibility. A prominent tour operator decided to bring his group of tourists to Rumbak to spot the elusive snow leopard after a series of unsuccessful days where they were originally based. The tourists were only coming into the park for a day trip, as they were lodged elsewhere. Frustrated that the space was being used without benefit to the villagers, some residents of Rumbak prevented the group from entering the area. Delegates from the Department of Wildlife Protection were, however, quick to come to the village and remind residents of the organisation’s authority over activities inside the park and of the inadmissibility of their intervention.

Depending on the location of a village in relation to the road, some residents are already experiencing a significant decrease in income from homestays and porterage. This is the case in communities along the Markha Valley, which is now partly connected by road. Groups of motorbike riders have started to enter the park, and without regulation the noise and pollution generated by such groups could alter the wild character of the park and disturb the wildlife. This new form of tourism, residents also fear, would make the area less appealing to trekkers. Overall, the situation foreshadows important consequences for anyone connected to the tourist industry, from homestay operators to cooks, guides, and porters. This prompted residents in the Markha Valley to recently approach the Department of Wildlife Protection in order to discuss the implementation of a checkpoint at the park’s southern entrance.¹⁸ Despite not currently being in operation, the checkpoint at the Zingchen park entrance continues to exude influence by inspiring discussion. An artifact of citizen-led innovation, it incarnates the agency of a Himalayan community confronted by state logics of infrastructure provision premised on exclusion.

Acknowledgements

We extend our heartfelt thanks to our interlocutors in Hemis National Park for generously sharing their time and welcoming us into their homes. We also value the constructive feedback from Philippe Messier, Leo Coleman, and two anonymous reviewers, which has enriched this article. Special thanks to Charlotte Weiler and Gabriella Richardson for their research assistance.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.

Notes

1 This included the Leh Department of Wildlife Protection, the Leh District Administration, the Jammu and Kashmir Tourism Development Corporation, the Youth Association for Conservation and Development of Hemis National Park, the Snow Leopard Conservancy India Trust, the All Ladakh Tour Operators Association, and the media.

2 For example, see De Filippi (1932, 223), Fleetwood (2019), Younghusband (1904, 161–170), Workman and Workman (1900).

3 Both authors participated in the data collection process. A resident of Ladakh, Jigmat Lundup collected data in 2021 when the COVID-related isolation protocols were lifted in Ladakh but access to India remained restricted for non-national researchers.

4 The region of Ladakh was under Jammu and Kashmir State until the administrative reconfiguration by which it became a Union Territory in 2019.

5 Different sources evoke different areas, which generally range between 4,300 to 4,500 sq km.

6 Fox and Nurbu (1990, 80) report that in 1984, after becoming aware of the inclusion of their village inside the boundaries of the park and of the potential implications for their subsistence activities and even for remaining inside the park, villagers from the Rumbak and Markha valleys lodged a protest against the park. The authors explain that residents were reassured that there had never been any intention of removing local residents from the park and that traditional land use rights were not going to be impacted by the creation of the park. The misunderstanding would have been an outcome of a lack of communication, including not involving local residents in the park’s management. Attempts to bring clarity to this issue during fieldwork did not reveal much. However, one man in Rumbak suggested that the villagers were initially asked to vacate the park. They mobilised and asked the state for compensation in the form of land in Leh where they could resettle. This would have eventually led to the abandonment of the initial project of forced resettlement.

7 The name of the organisation changed from ‘Department of Wildlife Protection, Jammu and Kashmir’ to ‘Department of Wildlife Protection, UT Ladakh’ when Ladakh became Union Territory in 2019. For simplicity, we use ‘Department of Wildlife Protection’ throughout the article.

8 Chandola’s (2012) survey of 108 households in Hemis National Park indicates that 69 per cent were involved in tourism-related activities, with 27 households operating homestays.

9 Chandola’s (2012) survey (108 households) reveals that goats were owned by 64 per cent of households, and 72 per cent owned sheep. Our data collected from 25 households indicate that 20 per cent own sheep and goats, suggesting a significant decrease in the last decade.

10 We collected several testimonies implying the complexity of the process as reason for not putting a claim forward. However, the process has improved significantly recently and residents who lose animals through predation can now claim compensation online.

11 A similar process has affected farming, and several families now leave some of their plots of land uncultivated due to a lack of workforce.

12 In fact, some of our interlocutors were not aware that their village was inside a national park.

13 Several interlocutors have pointed out that the control and monitoring of building activities inside the park has increased since Ladakh became a Union Territory in 2019. This is explained by the fact that the seat of the Department of Wildlife Protection is now in Leh and therefore physically closer than when the region was governed as part of Jammu and Kashmir State.

14 Because of the need for bridges, four villages in the Markha Valley were only connected in the season when the river’s water level was sufficiently low to allow transport. Two more villages had no road connectivity because of the difficult terrain.

15 The situation was, however, expected to improve significantly as of 2023, with the introduction of a government scheme that started to connect villages to the internet by providing households with solar-powered Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT).

16 On similar seeming feelings of remoteness despite physical proximity, see Harms et al. (2014). In their special issue, Harms et al. argue that the concept of ‘remote’ should not be solely bound by geographic location; instead, the authors interpret remoteness as a state of existence, a social construct that transcends spatial boundaries.

17 Only two research participants were against the building of roads.

18 At of the time of writing, these discussions were still recent and ongoing.