Sonam Wangchuk, a mechanical
engineer from Leh, who inspired the character of Phunsukh Wangdu played by
Aamir Khan in the Bollywood film 3 Idiots, plans to set up an alternative
university. The university, to be housed in Leh, will seek to develop the
mountain regions.

 “The university, Himalayan Institute of
Alternatives, Ladakh (HIAL), will be an alternative university for mountain
development. It will use our 25 years of experience of hands-on practical
education at SECMOL school and scale it up for higher education at
international level,” informed Wangchuk, who was recently awarded the
prestigious Rolex Awards for Enterprise 2016 for his innovative Ice
Stupas. 

Wangchu recently visited the
Capital for a talk series organised by the Future Institute, where he shared
his journey and vision of transforming the conventional education system to an
alternative learning approach through his visionary project of establishing a
university for alternative learning in Ladakh. At the event, Wangchu also
launched a global crowd-funding campaign for contributing to the making of the
institute.

 “I have decided to donate the award money of
roughly Rs 1 crore towards this university, to quickly begin the greening of
desert while funds for construction and so on start flowing in,” said Wangchuk.

Unlike the conventional
education system, this university won’t focus on bookish education but on
practical education. It will engage the students in finding real solutions to
real life challenges faced by the people of the mountains. The vision of the
university would be to provide the young generation of Ladakh with a platform,
where they would be running various enterprises, the funds from which will play
a major role in running the university. “It will be the sweat equity that the
students will be paying as a fee for the university. This project is likely to
change the face of higher education in India,” said Wangchuk.

The local government of
Ladakh has been very supportive of the project by giving 200 acres of land for
the construction of the university. Student enrollment will begin from next
year. Sixty per cent students will be only from Ladakh and the rest from other
parts of the country.