‘Solar-Heated Military Tent’: Sonam Wangchuk, Inspiration For 3 Idiots, Comes Up With New Innovation For Indian Armed Forces

In a positive development, Sonam Wanghchuk, the man who inspired the character of ‘Fungsuk Wangdu’ in the movie 3 Idiots, has come up with news innovation to keep the jawans of Indian Army staioned in the Ladakh region warm amidst the unforgiving weather.

The engineer-turned education reformer has created solar-heated military tents that can be used by 10 Indian Army jawans at a time and is portable.

He shared the images of said tent on Twitter claiming that it can keep the Army men warm at 15 degrees even when it is -14 degrees outside.

"Replaces tons of kerosene, pollution #climatechange For 10 jawans, fully portable all parts weigh less than 30 Kgs," he added. He also stated that the innovation is climate neutral and is completely made in India.

Praising his noteworthy efforts, Anand Mahindra said in a tweet, “Sonam, you’re the MAN! I salute you. Your work is energising, even this late in the evening...”

The post went viral on social media with over 90,000 likes and more than 22,000 retweets. Netizens congratulated Wangchuk and cheered for his efforts.

Wangchuk is the founder director of the Students' Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh and is known for simple yet new solutions for complex problems. It was started in 1988 when he realised that the local kids were losing interest in the conventional methods of learning, manifested in high number of students failing. But the situation improved as the school gained its ground and word spread of its fame.

He is well-known for inventing the Ice Stupa technique to create artificial glaciers. Ice Towers, or 'Ice- Stupas', as he preferred to call them, are a form of artificial glaciers formed in a conical shape, to overcome the irrigation problem in the rain-deficient region.