The Naropa fellowship aims to help youth from hills to be agents of change

Chozin Palmo, 21, had her life and path charted out until very recently. From a nomadic Ladakhi family with illiterate parents, Palmo finished schooling from Leh and headed to Jammu for her graduation in commerce.

 
Although she knew it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk, she had her heart set on clearing the Indian Administrative Service (IAS) examination. Palmo had planned to go to Delhi post her graduation to take coaching for the examination when she heard about the Naropa fellowship in Hemis. It took her no time to decide to jump onto the bandwagon. The four tenets of what it promised interested her : leadership, entrepreneurship, communication skills and society and culture – all of which would help her develop her personality.
 
Besides, after a few years out of Ladakh, it would give her a chance to be closer home for a bit! She could always try for the civil services a year later, if that’s what she still wants at the end of the programme, she figures.
 
Gurleen Kaur, 22, on the other hand has stepped way out of her comfort zone – from Delhi to Ladakh. While doing her graduation in economics from Delhi university, Kaur started teaching students through the NGO CARE. She soon realized that the path she had initially envisaged for herself (economics, MBA and then a high paid corporate job) was not for her. She wanted to “not just teach but drive bigger change in society”. When she heard about the Naropa fellowship at 12,000 feet, her love for the mountains combined with her desire to drive change convinced her this was the way ahead. She’s grappling with the cold and altitude but overjoyed with her colleagues at the fellowship – people she finds “more straight and unaffected” than those she leaves behind.
 
Pahalgam born Abdul Majid Attar, 23, was working on a not-so-enviable assignment – the grievance cell of the Jammu and Kashmir government - when he learnt about the Naropa fellowship. As a young boy, Majid had spent his years trekking and climbing along with his father, a photographer by profession and developed a love for the mountains. Over the last few years, he’s been watching the environmental degradation – “the garbage menace, the polluting of water, the indiscriminate felling of trees and the general lack of respect for the surroundings” – and Majid found he could no longer bear it. He decided he’d do something about it and that’s where Naropa fit in. It would equip him with everything he needs to set up a sustainable enterprise that preserves the environment he loves.
 

Majid, Kaur and Palmo are three of 60 students (between 21-33 years) who have been selected for the first batch of the Naropa fellowship, a one year residential programme for post graduates, focused on nurturing agents of change fostering an ecosystem of entrepreneurship and growth in the Himalayas. It is expected and hoped some of the graduates will set up sustainable ventures in Ladakh and other mountainous regions and provide employment for others while creating a meaningful impact. Tackle the growing problems that development inevitably brings with it – higher pollution, environmental degradation, a growing garbage menace, destruction of natural spaces and habitat, water shortage, among others.
 
The programme will give a preference to students from Ladakh, Kashmir, Sikkim, HP, Uttarakhand, Nepal and even Bhutan but is also open to those from the plains who feel this is their main calling. The curriculum is multi-track and focuses on four main planks : entrepreneurship, society and culture, communication and personal growth.
 
The two founders of the fellowship are His Eminence Drukpa Thuksey Rinpoche and former dean of ISB and one of the founders of Ashoka university Pramath Sinha. The whole idea of the Naropa fellowship is to stem the continuous outflow of students and the youth of the region.
 

According to His Eminence Thuksey Rinpoche, in all these years, he’s only been watching the youth of Ladakh leaving their land to study in Jammu, Chandigarh, Delhi or Varanasi, grappling with the lack of employment opportunities at home and often ending up quite disillusioned. At times, it even makes criminal out of them. Naropa is the first comprehensive attempt to change this. Ventures set up by the fellows will provide job opportunities for others in the region, it is hoped.
 
A second problem that has arisen post 2009 is a growing alienation of the youth of the region from its own culture, tradition and customs. With the advent of television, the surge in tourism post 3 Idiots, the spread of the Internet age like wildfire, many of the older generation rue the fact that the youngsters seem disconnected with who and what they are and where they come from. That’s why the curriculum has a separate track on society and culture.
 
A new ecologically friendly campus is coming up close to the Hemis monastery – it’s still under construction – which in the first phase is being built to accommodate 120 students and 20 faculty. The idea is to see how the programme develops and at a later stage morph it into a full university with graduate and undergraduate programmes on offer. “The long term aim is to offer an alternative high quality higher education institution that today doesn’t exist in the region”, says Sinha. But the approach will be gradual. If the fellowship takes off as intended, the scope will be broadened. New phases to accommodate the growing numbers will be constructed as and when the need arises.
 
Over 40 academicians and experts have been roped in, primarily as visiting faculty, to run the programme. Some of the international faculty includes Kenwyn Smith from the University of Pennysylvania, School of Social Policy and Practice, Sundar Sarrukai from the Purdue university department of physics and two professors from Spain’s IE business school, among others.
 

Sinha – who is handling the curriculum and academic side of the programme - says that the “willingness and even keenness of faculty to come and teach in Ladakh” is what has made the whole thing possible as getting good faculty is the biggest hurdle in setting up any new institute. ISB, Ashoka, the Vedica programme, among a few others are all founded on the model of visiting faculty for semesters. The plan is to replicate this model.
 
The first year batch is almost fully on scholarship; the Rs 60 million (cost per fellow is around Rs 1 million). The total investment in the project is currently around Rs 100 million for which one of the donors is the Drukpa foundation.

Nidhi Reddy, who is the head of the project from Sinha’s team says that if even 10 of the 61 graduates set up their own enterprises focused on the environment and ecologically friendly solutions to some of the problems the region faces, she will consider the programme a success. Many, she expects, may go on the paths they have already chosen but will be better equipped to navigate them post the fellowship. If the first year is a success, the second year’s programme they hope will bring in more students who can pay their way and eventually make it self sustaining. In the future, new programmes of study can be added.
 
For Palmo, Kaur, Attar and the 57 other fellows, it’s a lifetime opportunity like none other. To be nestled in Ladakh’s beautiful landscape with 60 like-minded people, all in a similar age group is like a year-long paid for party. And the learning can’t hurt either.