A mountain school and Sonam Wangchuk’s experiments with educational reforms

If you have watched the film 3 Idiots, you may remember the school where Rancho was finally found. The school is SECMOL, the Students’ Educational and Cultural Movement of Ladakh, founded by Sonam Wangchuk, who has been more famous as a climate activist than as an educationist.

SECMOL, nestled in the mountains of Phey village in the Indus Valley, about 18 km from Leh, is perhaps best known in popular culture as the campus associated with the film’s closing scenes. Most important, it lets us peek into a window of Mr. Wangchuk’s four-decade engagement with education, long before his hunger strike, supporting Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), brought him back into the spotlight.