If you are put off by the name, then let us tell you that for someone as innovative a genius as Sonam Wangchuk, your regular John Doe name won’t do. Sonam Wangchuk is the breakthrough innovator and engineer who has inspired millions through a movie character based on him and helped hundred up in the land of high passes – Ladakh.
Though Wangchuk came to limelight with the 2009 hit Bollywood movie “3 idiots” starring Aamir Khan, his urge to help the people around him started way before, making him a known name up in the valleys. Born in a small village 70 kms from Leh, Sonam honed his intelligence through the foundation years studying at home and absorbing the knowledge of the nature. Such a great teacher was this that he was promoted twice in a year once he started attending a proper school. Sonam went on to study mechanical engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Srinagar, and it was there that he found the deplorable condition of child education around the valley. Collaborating with the government of Jammu and Kashmir, he has changed textbooks for state run schools in Ladakh, making them accessible to students in their language. In 1994, he created an alternative, solar powered, student built, student run school for failures, for those rejected by the system, and gave them an opportunity to make something of themselves. This came to be the Himalayan Institute of Alternatives (HIAL), an alternative university for mountain development that Wangchuk set up, where 95 per cent students failed their board exams in 1996. Over the next two decades, this number has steadily decreased to 25 per cent this year.
“But then we wanted to take care of the ones who still failed, give them a new chance, re-launch them,” said Sonam. Which is what the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) achieves through its school in Phey, around 12 kms from Leh. The institute schools about 70-100 students, all of whom failed their 10th board, to help making living there a learning experience in itself. Wangchuk says that the students run the school themselves, “like a little country with its own elected government”. “They learn by doing – they farm, keep animals, make food products and engage in solving real life problems that they face in these harsh climatic conditions.”
Apart from this, Wangchuk also received the much coveted Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2016, the second one after herpetologist Romulus Whitaker. Bringing home $10,000, Wangchuk received the prize for founding ‘ice stupas’ that freeze water in the -25 degree Celsius temperature of Laddakh to later melt in summer and provide a continuous supply of water to this silver desert. “A pipe brings water from the upstream to the downstream. When you do that, the built up pressure in the pipe is used to run a fountain that sprays water in the air,” Sonam explains. When the water is sprayed in the -20 degree temperatures of the Ladakhi winter, it cools and freezes as it falls. And slowly, naturally takes the shape of a giant conical structure. “The idea is to freeze the water in the winter and use it in late spring. The conical tower shape ensures that the surface exposed to the sun is minimal, so premature melting is avoided,” he further said.
In 2014, Wangchuk and his men successfully built a 7 meter tall prototype ice stupa, which has grown to 20 metres tall in height, supplying millions of litres of water around the area. Sonam is now one of the saviors of the northern hilly regions, their hope for a better future with sustainable technology. All because a little boy thought that learning and imagination was far better than degrees and grades. Hope India sees a sprout of many more Sonam Wangchuks over the coming years.
