By Sudeshna Sarkar, IANS
Kathmandu : A remote village in the far west of Nepal that became connected to the world through the Internet now finds itself in the limelight after the man who transformed it was honoured with the prestigious Magsaysay award, regarded as Asia's Nobel Prize.
Mahabir Pun, 52, became the fourth Nepali to win the award conferred by the Manila-based Ramon Magsaysay Award Foundation for his innovative work in connecting far-flung villages of Nepal through wireless computer technology.
Pun, along with six other recipients from India, the Philippines, South Korea and China, will receive the award in Manila on August 31.
An unsung hero from Nangi village in Nepal's Myagdi district, Pun's vision for improving the lot of the cut-off village started after he went to the University of Nebraska in 1989 for a Bachelor's degree in science education.
There was no electricity or telephone in Pun's village, the schools did not have books and there were no classes after Grade VII. His family moved to Chitwan district in the Terai plains where he studied further.
While studying abroad, he realised how information technology could become a magic key for the isolated and deprived villages by opening up a new world.
Pun joined computer classes, learnt how to refurbish and run computers and collected 14 used computers from Japan, Malaysia, Australia, Singapore, and the US.
He brought them home, taught students and teachers how to use them and started a silent revolution in Nangi village.
To surmount the problem of electricity to run the computers, in a rivulet he installed two small hydrogenerators donated by Singaporean climbers on their way to Mount Everest and by using wireless Ethernet cards donated by IBM of Finland he began creating a communication network among schools that can be used for meetings, email, and Internet access.
He also founded the Himanchal High School that combines a government-supported middle school and a community supported higher secondary school.
To pay for the teachers' salaries, he began instituting income-generating projects, like tourist camps with hot shower facilities, which attract trekkers. Pun is also helping the villagers sell their ware through e-commerce.
Pun's most endearing trait perhaps is that while other young men in his village left to join the British and Indian Armies, he stayed on, teaching in schools.
While his community is mostly known as producing the valiant Gorkha soldiers, Pun's achievement now shows a new side as a visionary innovator.