By Ujaya Shakya

I want to begin with a heartfelt thank you. Since the devastating flash floods in Rasuwa and surrounding areas of Nepal, I have received messages and calls from friends and colleagues across the world. Your concern for Nepal, your prayers for those affected n your words of solidarity have meant a great deal during this painful time. These messages reminded me that compassion has no borders. They also encouraged me to make a wider appeal.

Lives have been lost. Many people remain missing. Families are waiting for news, communities have been displaced and essential infrastructure has been destroyed. Nepal needs the world’s continued prayers and support. But prayers and expressions of sympathy, however meaningful, cannot be where our response ends. Alongside our grief, we must begin an urgent global conversation about Climate Change, Disaster Preparedness and the Growing vulnerability of Mountain Communities.

This is more than a tragedy in Nepal. Rasuwa may be the place currently in the headlines but the warning it carries extends far beyond Nepal. Mountain regions around the world are facing increasingly uncertain environmental conditions. Glacial instability, flash floods, landslides, extreme rainfall and rapidly changing weather patterns are placing lives, livelihoods and infrastructure at greater risk. These risks do not remain confined to remote mountain settlements. Mountains feed the rivers that sustain agriculture, drinking water, energy systems, tourism, trade and economies. When mountain ecosystems become unstable, the human impact can travel across districts, countries and generations. Protecting mountain communities is therefore not a marginal concern. It is connected to the future security of millions of people.

The Rasuwa tragedy must become more than another disaster that the world briefly mourns and then forgotten. It must be treated as a global warning n a call to action.

Why I am appealing to the Creative Community:

Climate change is rightly discussed by scientists, governments, humanitarian organisations and development institutions. Their research, expertise and leadership are essential. But climate vulnerability is also a Communication Challenge. Scientific information is often complex. Important risk assessments can remain inside reports. Early warnings may not reach vulnerable communities in time, in the right language or in a form people can easily understand. Even when information is available, people may not know what it means for their families or what action they should take. The global advertising, branding, marketing, media, design, technology and creative communities possess capabilities that can help bridge this gap.

Technology platforms with global reach including companies such as Google, Meta and TikTok, could help strengthen location based and multilingual early warning communication for communities with different levels of digital access. Brands could use their distribution networks, packaging, mobile platforms, retail relationships and media reach to support preparedness in difficult to reach areas. Media organisations and content creators could amplify verified information, reduce the spread of rumours during emergencies and keep mountain communities visible after the immediate headlines have disappeared.

Creative festivals, industry bodies and award platforms could introduce global creative briefs focused on mountain resilience, climate communication and disaster readiness. They could create space for agencies, brands and technologists to develop open source ideas that communities can adapt and use. Our industry knows how to capture attention. We simplify complex information, tell memorable stories and influence behaviour. We communicate across languages, cultures and different levels of literacy. We use design, data, media and technology to move people from awareness to action.

Can we use these abilities to help protect human lives?

No individual campaign can solve climate change. But communication can make risk easier to understand. Good design can make warnings clearer. Technology can help critical information travel faster. Storytelling can help people understand the human impact. Creativity can help move communities from awareness to preparedness. The opportunity is not to turn tragedy into a branding exercise. It is to use our professional abilities responsibly to address an urgent human challenge.

Our work should help answer practical questions:

• Where should families go during an emergency?
• How can evacuation routes be communicated clearly?
• How can people without reliable internet receive urgent information?
• How can schools, tourism businesses and community leaders become part of the warning system?

These may not look like traditional advertising briefs. But they are communication problems and communication is where our industry can contribute.

Mountain communities must lead the conversation. Any meaningful response must begin by listening to the people who live in mountain regions. They possess generations of knowledge about their landscapes, rivers, weather patterns and local warning signs. They should not be treated only as vulnerable populations or passive recipients of outside solutions. They must be partners in designing these solutions. Technology should help strengthen local knowledges. Data may help anticipate danger but trust determines whether people act. Communication may create awareness but preparedness also requires infrastructure, resources and long term commitment. The most meaningful response will bring together community knowledge, climate science, public institutions, humanitarian experience, responsible brands, media reach, technological capability and creative thinking.

A Global Call from Nepal:

I appeal to creative professionals, industry associations, agency networks, brands, media platforms, technology companies, designers and storytellers around the world: Help us bring greater attention, ideas and collective action to the protection of mountain regions and their people. Let us begin asking difficult but necessary questions.

• How can climate information become understandable and actionable?
• How can warnings travel faster across remote difficult terrain?
• How can global technology work alongside local knowledge?
• How can brands support resilience beyond a single campaign cycle?
• How can our industry help ensure that vulnerable communities remain visible before - not only after disaster strikes?

Behind every climate disaster is a community whose future depends on decisions being made today. Nepal needs your prayers and support. But Rasuwa and mountain communities around the world also need your attention, collaboration and ideas. Let this tragedy not become another moment the world mourns and then forgets. Let it become a moment when the global creative community chooses to listen, come together and act.

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THIS IS NO LONGER A CONTEST OF ENDURANCE. IT IS A TEST OF DEMOCRATIC RESPONSIVENESS.

A BODY BECOMES THE LAST PETITION

At Jantar Mantar, in the hard heat and noise of New Delhi, Sonam Wangchuk’s shrinking body has become an expanding question for India: how much must a citizen suffer before power considers listening a democratic duty?

On 13 July 2026, his indefinite hunger strike entered its sixteenth day. Wangchuk began the water-only fast on 28 June in solidarity with the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party protest over the NEET-UG paper leak, wider examination irregularities and the demand for accountability at the highest levels of the Union education establishment. He has also carried into the protest Ladakh’s unresolved demand for constitutional, ecological and democratic safeguards.

The latest publicly reported medical figures, from the fifteenth day, were grave enough without exaggeration: a loss of about 7.8 kilograms and blood pressure recorded at 104/66 mm Hg. He was visibly weak. Yet he continued to speak with an almost disarming absence of self-dramatisation. A day earlier, rejecting comparisons with Mahatma Gandhi, he asked citizens not to wait for saviours but to “be your own hero.”

That sentence changes the meaning of the fast. Wangchuk is not asking India merely to watch a heroic man suffer. He is asking citizens to recover their own agency. Still, no society can hide behind the striker’s courage. Prolonged fasting can lead to arrhythmia, organ injury, cognitive impairment and death. This is no longer a contest of endurance. It is a race between democratic responsiveness and physical collapse.

“A sensitive government in a democracy listens to the pains of the people.” — Sonam Wangchuk, speaking to Reuters, 30 June 2026

THE CRISIS IN NUMBERS

Suicide figures are reported counts around the examination crisis; each case requires individual, sensitive verification.

WHEN MERIT IS MADE MEANINGLESS

The immediate cause of this fast is not a technical dispute about how an examination was administered. It is the collapse of trust in one of the few institutions through which young Indians are told that effort can overcome birth, geography and poverty.

More than 2.3 million candidates were affected when the original NEET-UG 2026 examination was cancelled after the paper-leak scandal and a retest was ordered. Behind that number were families that had spent years paying for coaching, travel, rent, books and application fees; students who had organised adolescence around a single date; and parents who had converted savings, jewellery or debt into hope. A leaked paper does not merely compromise an answer key. It steals time from the honest and sells advantage to the connected.

The human cost has been reported in devastating terms. The Indian Express documented at least 12 deaths by suicide in the 37 days between cancellation and the retest; the Financial Times later reported at least 20 student suicides around the examination crisis. Every case has its own circumstances, and no death should be reduced to a slogan or assigned a single cause without careful investigation. But the scale of distress is undeniable. It demands a response rooted in compassion, evidence and institutional responsibility—not statistical evasion.

This is the principle at the heart of Wangchuk’s intervention: when a public examination affecting millions fails, accountability cannot end with a press release, a retest and promises of tighter security. It must establish how the breach occurred, who benefited, who failed in oversight, what compensation and counselling are owed to candidates, and what changes will prevent repetition. Otherwise, the state asks young people to trust a system that has offered them no reason to do so.

AN EXAMINATION LEAK IS NOT A CLERICAL ERROR. IT IS THEFT FROM MILLIONS OF YOUNG LIVES.

HE NEVER CALLED A CHILD A FAILURE

Wangchuk’s presence gives this protest unusual moral force because education is not a theme he discovered for political convenience. It is the work of his life.

A mechanical engineer by training, he co-founded the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh—SECMOL—in 1988. Its founding insight was revolutionary because it was humane: perhaps Ladakhi children were not failing education; perhaps an alienating education system was failing them. Students were often taught through languages, examples and methods disconnected from the mountains, livelihoods and culture around them. Wangchuk helped replace this estrangement with learning rooted in local reality.

At SECMOL, a young person could learn solar energy by running a solar-powered campus, management by helping administer it, agriculture by cultivating difficult land, and citizenship by accepting responsibility for a community. The purpose was not to romanticise poor academic performance, but to rebuild confidence and demonstrate that intelligence is wider than memory under examination pressure.

His work also contributed to Operation New Hope, a collaboration among communities, civil society and public institutions to reform government schooling in Ladakh. The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation honoured him in 2018 for a systematic, collaborative and community-driven transformation of learning systems. The recognition mattered because Wangchuk had not created an elite island for exceptional children. He had helped redesign the relationship between school, society and the child.

That history explains why he cannot treat the examination scandal as an administrative inconvenience. To Wangchuk, education is not a sorting machine that discards the many to reward the few. It is a public trust. When that trust is corrupted, the injury is moral before it is procedural.

A LIFE OF PRACTICAL IDEALISM

HE MADE ICE STAND UPRIGHT

Wangchuk’s best-known invention began with a paradox. Ladakh has abundant frozen water in winter, but farmers need irrigation in spring, before natural glaciers begin to melt sufficiently. His answer was the Ice Stupa: winter stream water channelled through pipes and sprayed into sub-zero air, where it freezes into a tall conical mass.

The geometry is the genius. A cone stores a large volume while exposing relatively little surface area to the sun, allowing the ice to melt slowly into the planting season. No grand dam is required, and gravity can do much of the work. The innovation earned Wangchuk the Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2016 and became an internationally recognised model of locally rooted climate adaptation.

He has applied the same ethic to passive-solar buildings, earth construction and high-altitude education: begin with the lived problem, respect the ecology, use science intelligently and ensure that the community can operate the solution. His inventions do not arrive from outside demanding that the mountains adjust. They grow from the mountains’ own conditions.

There is a painful symmetry in the present moment. The man who taught India how to preserve winter water for the season of need is now consuming his own physical reserves because the institutions meant to preserve public trust appear unwilling to act in time.

NOT A FILM CHARACTER—A WORKING METHOD

Popular culture introduced millions to Wangchuk through the widespread description of Phunsukh Wangdu, Aamir Khan’s unconventional inventor in 3 Idiots, as partly inspired by him. The comparison made his ideas accessible: curiosity over rote learning, invention over credentialism, usefulness over status.

But cinema can also shrink a life into a charming eccentricity. The real Wangchuk has spent decades doing what a film resolves in three hours—building institutions, negotiating with governments, raising resources, making mistakes, testing prototypes, confronting entrenched systems and returning to work the next morning.

His importance lies not in being a ‘real-life Wangdu’. It lies in offering a repeatable civic method: understand deeply, simplify intelligently, build collectively and accept responsibility for consequences. That method now indicts the state. A government that celebrates innovation in speeches cannot remain indifferent when one of the country’s most credible innovators says that the architecture of accountability is broken.

“Do not wait for a hero. Be your own hero.” — Sonam Wangchuk’s appeal from the protest, 11 July 2026

THE MOUNTAIN IS NOT A POSTCARD

The fast is also inseparable from Ladakh. Since the reorganisation of Jammu and Kashmir in 2019, Ladakhi organisations have demanded statehood, constitutional protection under the Sixth Schedule, safeguards for land and employment, and meaningful local authority over development.

For Wangchuk, these are not abstract constitutional clauses. They determine who decides the future of a fragile cold desert: its residents, or distant institutions and commercial interests. Ladakh faces glacier retreat, water insecurity, unregulated tourism, infrastructure pressure and the possibility of large projects being imposed without sufficient ecological limits or local consent. A region celebrated as a strategic frontier and tourist paradise can still be denied an adequate democratic voice.

Wangchuk undertook a 21-day climate fast in 2024 and helped lead a march towards Delhi. In September 2025, after protests in Leh turned violent and four civilians were killed, the authorities accused him of contributing to unrest through provocative statements. He denied inciting violence and appealed for peace. He was detained under the National Security Act on 26 September and remained imprisoned for roughly 170 days before the Union government revoked the detention in March 2026.

Accuracy matters here. Wangchuk was detained under a preventive-detention law; he was not convicted of treason. One may debate his politics, the government’s allegations or the tactics of the movement. But disagreement does not erase the central democratic question: can a border region seek constitutional and environmental safeguards without its most recognisable voice being treated principally as a security problem?

SILENCE IS ALSO A DECISION

As the fast moves into its third week, the most disturbing fact is not simply Wangchuk’s medical decline. It is the absence, so far, of a publicly reported formal negotiation capable of producing an honourable resolution.

Dialogue is sometimes misrepresented as capitulation. In a democracy it is often the opposite: an assertion that institutions are strong enough to hear criticism, test allegations and correct failure. A minister need not accept every accusation in order to meet protesters. A government need not concede every demand in order to establish an independent inquiry, publish a timeline, offer student relief and open structured talks.

The state has greater power, greater information and greater capacity than a citizen on a mattress. That asymmetry creates a greater duty of care. To wait for the body to fail is not neutrality. Delay itself becomes policy.

ANNA HAZARE: THE LESSON IS NEGOTIATION, NOT NOSTALGIA

The memory of Anna Hazare’s 2011 anti-corruption fast inevitably hangs over Jantar Mantar, but the comparison must be made accurately. Hazare began an indefinite fast on 5 April 2011; the Union government constituted a joint drafting committee on 8 April, and he ended the fast on 9 April. His larger August agitation lasted 12 days and ended after Parliament expressed agreement in principle on key demands. The Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act was eventually passed in 2013—not instantly at the protest site.

The relevant lesson is not that every hunger strike should dictate legislation. It is that government engagement can begin before a citizen’s health reaches an irreversible threshold. Negotiation does not make elected authority weak; it demonstrates that authority understands its constitutional purpose.

Wangchuk’s sixteenth day therefore carries a stark question. If the state could open talks with a fasting anti-corruption campaigner in 2011, why can it not establish a credible channel with an educator and environmentalist in 2026—especially when millions of students have already borne the cost of an acknowledged examination breakdown?

DIALOGUE DOES NOT DIMINISH ELECTED AUTHORITY. IT REVEALS WHETHER AUTHORITY REMEMBERS ITS PURPOSE.

IF HE DIES, INDIA DOES NOT WIN

No responsible article should romanticise Wangchuk’s death. Martyrdom is not a policy outcome, and a funeral is not institutional reform. Yet refusing to consider the consequences would be equally irresponsible.

First, an examination controversy would become a moral crisis of the Republic. The defining question would no longer be only who leaked a paper, but why meaningful engagement did not begin while a nationally respected citizen’s health deteriorated in public view.

Second, scattered youth anger could acquire a unifying symbol. Paper leaks, unemployment, delayed recruitment, expensive coaching and arbitrary evaluation cross state, caste, class and language. Wangchuk’s death could connect these grievances into a wider consciousness of generational injustice. Peaceful frustration may then harden into a belief that institutions respond only after catastrophe.

Third, Ladakh’s constitutional movement would be transformed. A demand often treated as remote would be carried everywhere by the image of a Ladakhi educator dying in the national capital. The loss of a bridge-builder can empower voices less patient with dialogue. For a sensitive border region, alienation is not an abstract political cost.

Fourth, India’s international standing would suffer. Wangchuk is globally recognised for climate adaptation and educational reform. His preventable death during a non-violent protest would be cited in debates about democratic dissent, environmental justice and the treatment of civil-society actors.

Finally, the country could commit its most familiar act of evasion: mourn the man while abandoning the work. Institutions might be named after him, quotations circulated and statues proposed, while examination governance remained opaque and Ladakh’s safeguards unresolved. India has often found it easier to garland a photograph than to complete an unfinished agenda.

THE COUNTRY MUST CHOOSE NEGOTIATION BEFORE OBITUARY.

SAVE THE MAN—AND REPAIR THE SYSTEM

The answer cannot be merely to plead with Wangchuk to eat while leaving untouched the conditions that led him to fast. Nor should supporters value the symbolic power of his suffering above his life. Both the humanitarian emergency and the institutional demands must be addressed together.

The government should immediately appoint a senior, empowered interlocutor; open a recorded and time-bound dialogue with Wangchuk, student representatives and Ladakhi leaders; commission an independent investigation into the examination breach and associated administrative failures; publish a transparent reform schedule; and create psychological, academic and financial support for affected candidates and bereaved families. It should also resume credible constitutional discussions on Ladakh with ecological safeguards and local consent at the centre.

At the protest site, independent medical monitoring must be protected, clinical information communicated responsibly, and every route explored for a negotiated withdrawal that preserves Wangchuk’s dignity. Saving a life is not a political favour. It is the minimum duty of a state confronted with foreseeable harm.

Wangchuk has spent nearly four decades showing that apparently impossible problems can be redesigned. A student branded a failure can become a leader. Winter water can irrigate spring fields. Mud, sunlight and intelligence can keep a building warm at Himalayan temperatures. A marginal region can generate ideas for the world.

The problem before India is simpler than any of those: can power cross a few kilometres in Delhi and speak to a citizen before his body is broken?

The nation does not need another photograph draped in marigolds. It needs Sonam Wangchuk alive—in a classroom, on a mountain, beside an ice stupa, arguing, inventing and reminding us that public life can still be useful. The highest tribute is not to prepare an obituary. It is to create the conditions in which he can eat again.

The mountains are watching. The young are waiting. The clock is not.

WHAT RESPONSIBLE ACTION LOOKS LIKE

 

• A senior, empowered government interlocutor and a formal negotiation channel.
• An independent, time-bound inquiry into the leak, oversight failures and beneficiary networks.
• A published examination-security reform plan with institutional accountability.
• Counselling, academic relief and financial support for affected candidates and bereaved families.
• Renewed constitutional talks on Ladakh, with ecology, land, jobs and local consent at the centre.
• Independent medical monitoring and an honourable path for ending the fast.

SOURCE NOTES AND FACT-CHECKING BASIS

1. Reuters, “India’s Cockroach party seeking education minister’s ouster awaits cabinet reshuffle,” 30 June 2026.

2. The Times of India, “Watch: Sonam Wangchuk looks visibly weak as hunger strike enters day 15th,” updated 12 July 2026.

3. India Today/PTI, “I am not Gandhi, be your own hero: Sonam Wangchuk urges citizens to join protest,” 11 July 2026.

4. The Indian Express, “Ahead of NEET-UG re-exam, 12 suicides in 37 days,” 20 June 2026.

5. Financial Times, “Why India’s education system gets poor marks from millions of students,” 13 July 2026.

6. Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation, official citation for Sonam Wangchuk, 2018.

7. Rolex Awards for Enterprise, official project profile: Sonam Wangchuk and the Ice Stupa initiative, 2016.

8. Reuters, “Indian activist’s hunger strike for Ladakh autonomy draws thousands of supporters,” 23 March 2024.

9. Reuters, “Indian police arrest activist Wangchuk after deadly Ladakh protests,” 26 September 2025.

10. Press Information Bureau, Government of India, Finance Minister’s statement in Lok Sabha on the 2011 Lokpal movement, 27 August 2011; India Code, Lokpal and Lokayuktas Act, 2013.

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Pune, Staff Reporter

Renowned botanist, fort researcher and historian P. K. Ghanekar has emphasized the need to draw inspiration from historical knowledge, traditions and experiences to strengthen modern environmental conservation efforts.

Speaking at a special lecture titled “Environment in History”, organized jointly by Vanarai and Itihas Prabodhan Samiti Maharashtra on the occasion of World Environment Day, Ghanekar highlighted the deep connection between history and ecology. The event was held at Swatantryaveer Savarkar Adhyasan Kendra.

Ghanekar explained that the environment encompasses both living and non-living elements surrounding human life and noted that urban areas, rural landscapes, forests and forts each possess unique ecological characteristics. He highlighted the biodiversity, geological features and local ecosystems found around Maharashtra’s forts, citing the rare ‘Day Gecko’ species found in the Rajgad region as an example of the close relationship between natural and historical heritage.

Presiding over the event, Sagar Dharia expressed concern over alarming environmental trends. He noted that groundwater, which was available at depths of 10–12 metres in the 1950s, has now fallen to depths of 50–350 metres in many regions. He also pointed out that while forest cover may appear to be increasing, natural biodiversity-rich ecosystems continue to decline.

Dharia further stated that more than 40 percent of the country's wetlands have disappeared. Although overall rainfall levels remain relatively stable, the number of rainy days has declined significantly, leading to intense rainfall events over shorter periods and adversely affecting agriculture and the environment.

He identified rapid urbanization, plastic waste and changing lifestyles as major future challenges and urged citizens to adopt at least three environmentally friendly habits in their daily lives to contribute to sustainable change.

During the programme, environmentalist Dr. Gurudas Nulkar was felicitated for his notable contributions to the environmental sector. The event drew a large audience of environmental enthusiasts, historians, students and citizens.

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