Peter Griffin
In the high-altitude desert of Ladakh, a quiet genius is attempting to solve a water problem: By building stupas made of ice
In Raju Hirani’s mega hit 3 Idiots, Aamir Khan’s character Rancho turns out to be an unconventional teacher in Ladakh, who is also a brilliant inventor, Phunsukh Wangdu. The inspiration for that character, many say, is a gentleman called Sonam Wangchuk, but this is not acknowledged in the film’s credits.
On pressing him, Wangchuk says he met and chatted with Khan and his team in 2008, a few months before the film’s shooting began, at a CNN-IBN event, Real Heroes, which honoured Wangchuk and screened a short film on him and his work. (CNN-IBN is part of Network 18, the publishers of Forbes India.)
He says there are many similarities between the Rancho/Phunsuk character and his own life though the movie does not credit him in any way. He did not communicate this when the film released—“they might think I was asking for money, especially in view of the huge controversy with Chetan Bhagat over credit”—but he wrote to Khan and the producers two years later. They haven’t responded yet.
Wangchuk, 48, has put that behind him. He has way too many other things to do.
A mechanical engineer by training, an educator, a founder of SECMOL (Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh) in 1988, a 2002 Ashoka Fellow, Wangchuk is no mean innovator. The SECMOL Alternative Institute (SAI) campus, for instance, is designed to conserve heat, and uses solar energy. They burn no fuels to keep warm even in the bitterly cold winters.
He has also designed a low-cost water heater, and has pioneered organic farming and low-cost greenhouses, making the campus practically an oasis in that high-altitude desert. His students and he have developed things like mud pipes, literally dirt-cheap, and a variety of solar-powered devices.
They aren’t resting on their laurels. In January 2014, Wangchuk and his students began work on a test project that aims to tackle a very serious issue. Climate change, with the result of shrinking glaciers, could have catastrophic effects on the life of the people of Ladakh. Spring melts have slowed now, and with hotter summers, the melts are much faster and stronger: Which means that farmers get too little water in spring, and too much in summer. Traditional methods like check dams can help, but some fresh thinking is also needed.
Wangchuk had learnt of techniques like ‘glacier grafting’, which attempt to grow glaciers artificially, and had studied the work of a Ladakhi civil engineer, Chewang Norphel, who had been working on storing water in vast ice fields. The problem with these methods, Wangchuk says, is that they require special locations, where the ‘glaciers’ can be shielded from the sun by the bulk of higher mountains, and also that they require strenuous work to maintain.
Courtesy : www.forbesindia.com
Follow our WhatsApp channel
