The digital revolution in India is gaining pace, with more and more difficult locations such as Ladakh progressing towards seamless digital connectivity.
This historic Sunday saw Sonam Wangchuk - a Ladakhi engineer, innovator, education reformist and the inspiration behind Phunsukh Wangdu from the cult movie 3 Idiots, set the ball rolling with this digital bridge in Ladakh.
Over the course of the last few days, Sonam Wangchuk, sitting out of Ladakh, used Airtel 4G services to conduct live seminars over video conferencing followed by web seminars with hundreds of students across the country watching and learning from him.
Mr. Wangchuk is the founding-director of the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh (SECMOL) and is also known for designing the SECMOL campus that runs solely on solar energy. He has received several awards and recognition over the years for his exemplary work, including the State Award for outstanding environmentalist by J&K government (2016), Global Award for Sustainable Architecture (2017) and Rolex Awards for Enterprise.
Mr Wangchuk has been a strong voice in advocating the cause of providing digital connectivity in Ladakh.
Faced with a host of issues like unstable infrastructure, difficult geographical terrain and political unrest in the state of J&K, Ladakh faces more challenges than any other regular remotely placed village in the country.
People all over the world use internet for education, online transactions, current events, entertainment, email/voice /video communication, research and so on. However, Ladakh, for a long time has been devoid of the benefits of this Information superhighway.
For telecom companies, the expense to invest in a solution in such tough terrains, far outweighed the profit potential in the sparsely populated area.
In December last year, Airtel became the first operator to provide 4G services in Ladakh region, thus bringing Ladakh closer to a journey of seamless connectivity.
Mr Wangchuk thanked Airtel 4G for working towards making it a reality in Ladakh while also throwing in a word of caution saying that Internet is a double-edged sword and can harm as much as it can help us if we are not careful.
In a world built on email, websites, online transactions, with milestones like the one achieved by Mr Wangchuk and Airtel 4G, the dream for a 'Digital India and Cashless economy' seems not too far from turning into a reality.