For decades, Ladakh has been India’s overlooked Himalayan sentinel. Let’s be honest; this vast expanse guarding borders with Pakistan and China, has been treated as an afterthought by New Delhi, right from the beginning. More recently, under the UPA’s watch from 2004 to 2014, the region languished in a haze of indifference with funds trickling sporadically.
That could barely scratch the surface of crumbling schools, absent roads, and a healthcare system wheezing under altitude sickness and isolation. New Delhi’s obsession with its Kashmir-centric gaze left Ladakh’s Buddhist and Shia Muslim communities to fend against glacial melts and jobless winters. I am not calling it malice.
Historically, callous oversight has been the predominant decider in New Delhi’s ignorance towards regions distal from the national capital. Ladakh hasn’t been an exception to that. No votes in those high passes; no glamour in the barren plateaus. Naturally, the UPA’s “Vision Document Ladakh 2025,” unveiled with fanfare by Manmohan Singh, under that attitude, had kept gathering dust. Meanwhile infrastructure stagnated, unemployment festered, and the Ladakhi youth migrated southward.
BJP’s Big Push towards Development
Fast-forward to the BJP era, and Ladakh’s story flips from forgotten backyard to frontline focus. The 2019 split into a Union Territory becomes a game-changer, breaking Srinagar’s chokehold under the UPA’s decades of neglect. BJP cranked the dial: budgets exploded from INR 57 crore pre-2019 to INR 232 crore in the first UT year, peaking at INR 5,958 crore in 2024-25.
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Roads like the Zojila and Shinku La tunnels are now carving year-round access through brutal terrain. The Nimu-Padam-Darcha highway has slashed Zanskar’s trek to Leh. Power? A 3,589 MW renewable surge just greenlit last week for Nubra-Zanskar grids. Water’s flowing through drip irrigation schemes, and 1,000+ industrial units have sparked crores in investments since 2019. With astro-tourism at Hanle and Green Hydrogen projects, this is not just fancy talk; this is tarmac, turbines, and jobs.
Sonam Wangchuk sidesteps progress for politics
Yet, enter Sonam Wangchuk, who’s decided this avalanche of development is useless. He is out spinning yarn of some political crusade about “autonomy” and Sixth Schedule safeguards. So frustration about 50-plus years of lack of development flies out of the window now that Ladakhi people are prospering.
Those roads linking villages, the solar panels lighting homes, or the new districts that are bringing services closer are no more important. Wangchuk’s out there fanning flames over “eroded identities” and “unkept promises”. His September 2025 hunger strike whipped up a mob that torched Leh’s BJP office, gutted a CRPF van, left four dead, and injured 80.
Wangchuk name-drops Nepal’s riots and Sri Lanka’s chaos like it’s a playbook, not a warning. Now that development is humming there, Wangchuk chooses to chase a different script, one that smells more of foreign-funded colour revolutions than of Ladakh’s actual needs. Progress in Ladakh has suddenly become inconvenient to his narrative.
Bollywood gaslights to create the myth of Sonam Wangchuk
This Wangchuk character didn’t just sprout in a vacuum. The alchemic orchestration began in 2009 with Bollywood’s subversive touch: 3 Idiots. This Aamir Khan ode to rebellion, plucked him from Leh’s obscurity. He got painted as one Phunsukh Wangdu, a lovable genius who always outsmarted the system. Chetan Bhagat, who had originally written the novel (Five Point Someone) had mumbled some about the character’s origins.
But Bollywood is a cultural juggernaut; Bhagat was a nobody in comparison. India’s very own subversive silver-screen-syndicate, that has been long peddling gaslighting agenda on the sly through its multiple-decades-old relentless dehumanization of the Hindu ethos, sidelined Bhagat. Wangchuk was duly minted as Ladakh’s poster boy. This Bollywood halo was not a fluke; it was a launchpad. It turned this local tinkerer into a global eco-hero, ripe for bigger agendas.
Foreign funds, hidden accounts, and the funding facade
The cash followed fast. His SECMOL, a 1988 dropout-rehab project, and the 2015 Himalayan Institute of Alternatives (HIAL) became magnets for foreign funds. Ford Foundation, with its history of CIA-tinged “civil society” grants, poured in crores. Funds followed from Danish Church Aid, Karuna Trust, and Tata Trusts’ polished front.
HIAL’s 200-acre campus, leased cheap from the government, guzzled INR 6.5 crore siphoned to Wangchuk’s private Sheshyon Innovations, which raked in INR 9.85 crore but coughed up a laughable 1% profit. Dozens of bank accounts (six hidden at SECMOL, eight tied to Wangchuk himself) funnelled INR 2.3 crore abroad, dodging FCRA rules.
His Harvard-trained American wife, Rebecca Norman brought State Department-linked programs with her. The CBI’s now digging, triggered by MHA notices in August 2025, unmasking local deposits slipped into foreign pots and “consulting fees” for Swiss and UN gigs that smell more like cover than contract.
Classrooms as breeding ground for sedition
Subversion started small. SECMOL’s classrooms, meant to teach math and solar wiring, doubled as echo chambers for “local identity” gripes, twisting CBSE’s thin history lessons into India-as-occupier rants. There are even whispers of visitors in 2016 spotting Nepali separatists preaching “freedom” to students.
A sedition charge that year sent Wangchuk scurrying abroad. But by 2025, he is back and hobnobbing in Pakistan at Dawn Media’s “Breathe Pakistan” summit, peddling eco-talk while local handles amplify his “oppressed” shtick.
Sonam Wangchuk: Yunus connect and credentials
He has a Yunus connection too. In a 2020 British High Commission he met with him. At least on records. We have no idea about their relation beyond what is in the public domain. But with Yunus’ Nobel shining with the credentials of Bangladesh’s rape-murder-riot and coup, Wangchuk’s cozying up fits the mould.
The deliberate burning of Leh
This mould cracks open in Leh on September 24, 2025. Wangchuk’s 15-day fast, draped in Sixth Schedule demands, is not about development. Clearly, BJP’s roads, grids, and jobs undercut that excuse. This then becomes a political theatre, laced with dangerous nods to Nepal’s Gen-Z uprisings, Sri Lanka’s chaos, and Bangladesh’s riots.
His rhetoric lit the fuse: a mob, per MHA reports, broke from the fasting site, torched the BJP office in a calculated blaze, gutted a CRPF van, and looted Hill Council chambers. Stones flew, tear gas choked the air, police retaliated. Wangchuk got whisked away in an ambulance. Damage done, he tosses out an obligatory late video urging calm. Now, with blood on the ground, his FCRA license for SECMOL has been revoked. His land leases for HIAL has been yanked. Tax probes are now piling up.
An agent of fracture
Make no mistake; this isn’t about Ladakh’s real woes. Now that unemployment is down (with way to go, obviously), and that roads are up and power is flowing, this is about a man, propped by Bollywood and foreign cash, playing a script straight from the colour revolution handbook.
A handbook that teaches how to amplify grievances, dodge progress, and incite chaos. The UPA left Ladakh on its own; the BJP is trying to build it up, never mind the flaws and all. But Wangchuk is definitely not rallying for better schools or more turbines; his foreign handlers are making him chase a fracture.
