Psychiatrist Dr Bharat Vatwani & Sonam Wangchuk conferred Ramon Magsaysay Award 2018

Two Indian are among six Individuals who have been declared winner of this year Ramon Magsaysay Award. Bharat Vatwani is a psychiatrist who works for mentally ill people on the streets in Mumbai and Sonam Wangchuk is being honored for his community-focused work in educating and skilling young people in the remote region of Ladakh. Phunsuk Wangdu the lovable character from Aamir Khan starer 3 Idiots was inspired by Wangchuk life and work.

What is the announcement from the Ramon Magsaysay Foundation?

Two Indians, Bharat Vatwani, and Sonam Wangchuk, are among the winners of this year's Ramon Magsaysay Award, regarded as the Asian version of the Nobel Prize. The two are among six individuals declared winners on 26 July.

Two Indians - one a psychiatrist who works for the mentally-ill street persons and another whose initiative to harness science and culture creatively for economic progress improved the lives of the Ladakhi youth - were declared the winners.

Former Philippine ambassador and government peace negotiator Howard Dee is among the awardees of the prestigious 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

Youk Chang from Cambodia is a survivor of the 5-year Cambodian genocide who has devoted his life to documenting Khmer Rouge atrocities. He is recognized for “his leadership and vision in transforming the memory of horror into a process of attaining and preserving justice in his nation and the world.”

Maria de Lourdes Martins Cruz from East Timor founded Instituto Seculare Maun Alin Iha Kristu (Secular Institute of Brothers and Sisters), which is dedicated to uplifting vulnerable members of society through self-help projects in health care, education, and agriculture. She is recognized for her “pure humanitarianism… her nurturing the development of autonomous, self-reliant, caring citizens.”

Vo Thi Hoang Yen from Vietnam has dedicated her life to providing livelihood, skills training, and job placement to persons with disabilities (PWDs) through the Disability Research and Capacity Development organization, which she founded.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation President Carmencita Abella said the winners "are clearly Asia's heroes of hope, moving their societies forward through their unequivocal pursuit of the larger good”. She said, “In genuine solidarity with the disadvantaged and marginalised, each one has addressed real and complex issues with bold, and creative, and pragmatic action that has engaged others to do likewise. The results of their leadership are manifest in the changed lives of the many they have influenced”.

She added,“All are unafraid to take on large causes. All have refused to give up, despite meagre resources, daunting adversity and strong opposition. Their approaches are all deeply anchored on a respect for human dignity, and a faith in the power of collective endeavor ."

Both the Bharat Vatwani and Sonam Wangchuk awardees will be facilitated in Manila, the Philippine capital, on August 31.

Why does Sonam Wangchuk deserve this award?

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation stated that his reform projects had set an example for minority communities around the world.

The 51-year-old educator and innovator has worked on several initiatives to integrate sustainable engineering projects into vulnerable communities. He is being honoured for his community-focused work in educating and skilling young people in some of the most remote regions of northern India.

He has been instrumental in helping irrigate the arid lands of Ladakh using ice stupas, an innovation that’s being replicated from Sikkim to Switzerland and Peru.

Wangchuck was a 19-year-old engineering student at the National Institute of Technology in Srinagar when he went into tutoring to finance his schooling and help woefully unprepared students pass the national college matriculation exams.

This engineer-turned-educationist sparked a powerful movement in the eighties in Ladakh with his path-breaking school, a solar-powered, experimental venture run by and for students, Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL),which has carried out massive reforms in the region’s education system.

In 1994, with Wangchuk in the lead, Operation New Hope (ONH) was launched to expand and consolidate the partnership-driven educational reform program. He also founded Ladhakh’s only print magazine, Ladags Melong. His manifesto is “Equal access to education so that everyone gets the same start in life”.

In 2016, Wangchuk was also honoured with the Rolex Awards for Enterprise and he also won the award for Social Entrepreneur the Year at GQ India’s Men of the Year 2017.

It is hard for the fans of Bollywood to forget Phunsuk Wangdu, the lovable character from Aamir Khan starrer ‘3 Idiots’ and Sonam Wangchuk was an inspiration for this movie.

The Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation said in its citation that “He is being recognised for his uniquely systematic, collaborative and community-driven reform of learning systems in remote northern India, thus improving the life opportunities of Ladakhi youth, and his constructive engagement of all sectors in local society to harness science and culture creatively for economic progress, thus setting an example for minority peoples in the world”.

When did the Ice Stupa project begin?

Climate change in the region of Ladakh has shrunk glaciers and made rainfall and temperatures unpredictable. Water is needed to irrigate the fields of barley, apples, and other crops in spring, but the glacial melt doesn’t arrive until summer. To spare farmers a barren yield, maverick engineer Sonam Wangchuk invented a way to bring the glaciers to the people.

In 2015, with $125,000 raised on a crowdfunding site, Wangchuk built a 64-foot-tall “ice stupa” — an artificial glacier made by piping mountain streams into a Ladakhi village. The water spouts geyser-like from a vertical pipe, freezing into a cone of ice shaped like a Buddhist shrine. It’s designed to stay frozen until the spring sun warms the fields.

Sure enough, Wangchuk’s prototype began to melt in April, watering a field of newly planted poplar trees. By June, when the regular glacial melt began to flow, the ice stupa was mostly gone. Now Wangchuk is laying a pipeline to build 50 more ice stupas. Each will supply 10 million liters of water a year and irrigate 25 acres of land.

The inventor — whose past projects include solar-powered buildings and efficient cookstoves — won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 2016. He is using the award money to establish a pan-Himalayan research university that will address the region’s environmental concerns. The idea behind the ice stupa, now being replicated in the European mountains, is simple. But it took the genius of Wangchuk to bring it to life.

The stupa needs no pumps or power. We all know that water maintains its level. Therefore water piped from 60m upstream would easily rise close to 60m up from ground when it reaches the village. For simplicity we can imagine that the pipe is mounted on a mobile-phone tower of that height, and then it is made to fall from that height in cold Ladakhi winter nights when it is -30 to -50°C outside (with wind chill factor). The water would freeze by the time it reaches the ground and slowly form a huge cone or Ice Stupa roughly 30 to 50m high. In reality we won’t even need a tower structure since we can let the piped water first freeze at the ground level and then mount higher meter by meter as the thickness of the ice grows, finally reaching close to the height of the source.

The idea is also to conserve this tower of ice as long into the summer as possible so that as it melts, it feeds the fields until the real glacial melt waters start flowing in June. Since these ice cones extend vertically upwards towards the sun, they receive fewer of the sun's rays per the volume of water stored; hence, they will take much longer to melt compared to an artificial glacier of the same volume formed horizontally on a flat surface.

This idea, Wangchuk says, was inspired by the artificial glaciers created by his fellow Ladakhi engineer, 83-year-old Chewang Norphel. Norphel created glaciers at heights of 4,000 metres and above, which were very hard for villagers to reach. But Wangchuk found a way of storing water close to the villages.

However, the ice stupas are not popular with everyone. The farmers of Phey village downstream say that the water diverted to create the ice stupas deprives them of the water they use for their farms in winter, and which helps recharge the water table. Wangchuk believes their fears are unfounded. “Since it is a new idea, the farmers downstream are afraid that it might hurt their interests. That is why they are opposing the ice stupas,” Wangchuk said. “Generally, new concepts meet resistance until the experts and the administration are able to clear the doubts.”

All is well, more or less.

When was the award constituted?

The Ramon Magsaysay Award was established in 1957 as the Asia's highest honour. The award is widely regarded as Asia’s Nobel Prize and is the highest honour one can receive in the continent.

It celebrates the memory and leadership example of the third Philippine president after whom the award is named. It is given every year to individuals or organisations in Asia who manifest the same selfless service and transformative influence that ruled the life of the late and beloved Filipino leader.

The prestigious award is being given regardless of race, creed, nationality and gender – who manifests greatness of spirit in service to the Asian people since 1958. The prize was established in April 1957 by the trustees of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund based in New York City with the concurrence of the Philippine government.

This year's Magsaysay Award winners will each receive a certificate, a medallion bearing the likeness of the late President, and a cash prize.

The first awards were given in 1958 across 5 categories; all of them has now been discontinued beginning 2009. They were: 'Government Service', 'Public Service', 'Community Leadership', 'Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts', and 'Peace and International Understanding'. The cited reasons for this move was to broaden the scope of the award to include achievement in all possible categories.

The winners this year will be formally conferred the Magsaysay Award during formal presentation ceremonies to be held on 31 August, 2018 at the Cultural Centre of the Philippines.

Where did Bharat Vatwani make an impact?

Bharat Vatwani is a psychiatrist who is being honoured for his rescue of several thousands of mentally ill homeless persons whom he offered healthcare to and, in some scenarios, was able to reunite them with their loved ones.

Vatwani is being recognised for his tremendous courage and healing compassion in embracing India's mentally-afflicted destitute, and his steadfast and magnanimous dedication to the work of restoring and affirming the human dignity of even the most ostracized.

In 1989, the psychiatrists Dr Bharat Vatwani and Smitha Vatwani decided to start a rehabilitation home for mentally ill destitutes wandering the streets, leading them to establish Shraddha Rehabilitation Foundation in 1988 at Karjat, Maharashtra, aimed at rescuing mentally-ill persons; providing free shelter, food, and psychiatric treatment; and reuniting them with their families.

Dr Vatwani continues to practise twice a week in Mumbai, he also raises funds and contributes Rs 2 lakh every month for the upkeep of the 120 destitutes staying at the Karjat home. He has a staff of 20 social workers, eight nurses and three other doctors. They take the patient to their hometown with minimal details and dig out more with the help of the police and locals.

Dr Vatwani said, “Our work had begun prior to setting up the home. The turning point in my life was in the early 90s when my wife Smita, who is also a psychiatrist, and I noticed a horribly skinny boy drinking gutter water from a coconut shell… After appropriate care and treatment, the boy told us he was a BSc graduate…Mental illness can affect anyone and reduce a person to pathetically inhuman conditions”.

What started as attending to a couple of mentally ill destitutes led to setting up of a rehabilitation centre after a meeting with social worker Baba Amte. During the meeting, Dr Vatwani came across a schizophrenic destitute who was in chains. Recalling how Baba Amte was anguished at the sight, Dr Vatwani said, “His sensitivity drew me to him. It was bonding at its emotional best. While appreciating my work, he encouraged me to do more and that’s when we set up the rehabilitation home.”

“We don’t pick up beggars or homeless who know their way around. The mentally ill are out there on the roads because they can’t find their way back. They get lost because of being delusional,” says Dr. Vatwani, an alumnus of the Grant Medical College and GS Medical College in Mumbai.

The 60-year-old doctor hopes that the award will now bring much-needed attention to his cause of rehabilitating and reuniting the mentally ill, who have wandered away, with their families.

Who are the other Indian recipients of this prestigious award?

Vinoba Bhave was the first Indian to win the prestigious award for community leadership in 1958 for his Bhoodan Movement which inspired people to dispense with their surplus land. He advocated the use of nonviolence and human rights. He is regarded as the spiritual successor to Mahatma Gandhi.

Mother Teresa, the Nobel Peace Prize winner known for her work in serving the needs of poor people of India, mainly living in slum areas.

Kamaladevi Chattopadhyay, the social reformer mostly remembered for her contribution, during India’s freedom struggle, to upliftment the socio-economic conditions of Indian women.

Jayaprakash Narayan who was an independence activist, social reformer and political leader. He gained recognition for leading the mid-1970s opposition against PM Indira Gandhi.

Baba Amte, the social activist gained recognition for his work in rehabitating and empowering people suffering from leprosy.

Aruna Roy, the political and social activist recognized for co-founding Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS).

Kiran Bedi who served as an Indian police officer, and worked as a social activist was recognized worldwide for introducing several reforms at Tihar Jail in 2003.

Arvind Kejriwal, the current Chief Minister of Delhi, won the Award in the year 2006, for his involvement in grassroots movement ‘Parivartan’, which used RTI legislation fight against corruption.

Anshu Gupta a social entrepreneur and the founder of Goonj, a Delhi-based NGO which aims to use under-utilised urban material as a development resource in rural areas of the country won the award in 2015.

A celebrated Carnatic vocalist, TM Krishna performing for a social cause ever since he was six won the award in 2016.

Bezwada Wilson, the founder of Safai Karmachari Andolan, an organisation that is working towards eradicating the practice of manual scavenging from Indian villages, won the award in 2016 for “asserting the inalienable right to a life of human dignity”.

Famous Indian vocalists who won this award were M.S. Subbulakshmi and Pandit Ravi Shankar.

Satyajit Ray, Boobli George Verghese, Sombhu Mitra, Gour Kishore Ghosh, Arun Shourie, R. K. Laxman, K.V. Subbanna, Mahasweta Devi and Palagummi Sainath won the award for Journalism, Literature, and the Creative Communication Arts.

Amitabha Chowdhury and James Michael Lyngdoh for Public Service.

Verghese Kurien, Dara Nusserwanji Khurod, Tribhuvandas Patel, M.S. Swaminathan, Ela Bhatt, Mabelle Arole and Rajanikant Arole, Pramod Karan Sethi, Chandi Prasad Bhatt, Pandurang Shastri Athavale, Rajendra Singh, Shantha Sinha, Prakash Amte and Mandakini Amte won the award for community leadership.

Jockin Arputham and Laxminarayan Ramdas won the award for Peace and International Understanding (PIU).

How does India fail to celebrate its real heroes?

The country can spend almost all its media bandwidth on politics, debating if Prime Minister Narendra Modi should be given another chance in 2019 and if Rahul Gandhi is a worthy opponent. Meanwhile, many new unsung heroes of India continue to save and improve thousands of lives, not waiting for the establishment to make their country a better place.

Consider this: A midget by birth and a school dropout by fate, C Mallika has been active in social service for more than 20 years. The poor diet of the women in her village disturbed her and she was determined to find a solution. To start with, she set up 45 nutri-gardens in Kalaipatti Chatram, in her remote village in Pudukkottai district, and taught villagers how to manage the crops. Her next mission was to end open defecation. She managed to solve it by constructing toilets, which eventually made the village a defecation-free zone.

When we complain about ‘the society’, we forget that it is we who make the society and in return the society stands for us and working to improve the conditions of the society, bringing innovation in its functions, system and infrastructure, policies, is not optional but necessary. It is a task so important it cannot be left to the government.

India is currently witnessing the rise of ‘weekend warriors’ who volunteer every alternate weekend for noble causes. But there are a few who understand that if it’s a worthy cause for a weekend, it’s also a worthy cause for the entire life. And they simply take the plunge. These are the people who won’t flaunt their social work on their CV.

‘Heroes’ – when we hear this word, we most imagine someone larger than life. But the truth remains that most heroes are regular people, just like us, who are determined to make their society a better and a kinder place to live in. More often than not, these everyday heroes go unrecognised and unappreciated. It does not matter to them. But it must matter to the rest of us.

The masses often idolize the wrong people. They find inspiration in cricketers, film stars and even politicians. People fail to recognize those who truly deserve the respect and recognition in the society. There are many women activists who have played a significant role in eradicating many social evils and have been a shining beacon of hope. Some of them have displayed exemplary devotion in their respective fields.

Many had not heard of Kailash Satyarthi till the news broke about him being awarded the Nobel peace prize for 2014. Even four years later, not many know about him. Who would you love to meet if given a chance: Kailash Satyarthi, who has rescued thousands of trafficked children risking his life so many times he should also be given an award for being still alive, or… "Rana" Daggubati, the actor who played the nemesis of Baahubali in the movie Baahubali?

We found young people running in the direction of Daggubati and only a handful showing interest in interacting with Satyarthi when both happened to visit one university campus in Bengaluru on the same day for different events. At least two professors asked us, ‘Who is he, by the way?’ That ‘who’ was Satyarthi, by the way. Everybody knew Daggubati, the hero.

Who will you run towards?