Mahabir Pun Nepal Wireless Interview · 2111 words posted 07/05/2004 02:55 AM
After receiving his Master’s Degree in Education at the University of Nebraska at Kearney, Mahabir Pun returned to his native village, Nangi, and founded the Himanchal Education Foundation. Mr. Pun is currently at work establishing wireless networks in rural Nepal.
I conducted this interview with Mr. Pun over a series of email exchanges. Thanks to Sabeel Rahman for helping me formulate the questions, and to BoingBoing.net for bringing the original BBC story to my attention.
since1968: You’ve set up wireless networks in five villages. Can you talk about the physical process of setting up the networks? How are they powered?
Mahabir Pun: The network has been set up in five villages, located in different ridges of the mountain ranges through two relay stations. The elevation of Relay Station 1 is 10,800 ft and that of the Relay Station 2 is 12,000 ft. The villages that are networked are lying between 6,000 ft and 7,500 ft. Relay Station 1 is connected to the nearest ISP through dial-up networking, which is about 22 air miles away.
The relay tower at Relay Station 1 is actually a tall tree. We have tied antennas on the top of the tree pointing to different directions. The radios, laptops, and other accessories at Relay Station 1 and Relay Station 2 are powered by a 75w photo voltaic panel and a 400w wind generator.
Even with the two sources of power, it has been very difficult to run the radios all day at relay stations because of the lack of power. It is because this is monsoon time and there is almost no sunshine and no wind. The power problem will be for three months. Right now we are running the radios at the relay stations about four hours a day.
since1968: Why now? When did you start the project?
Mahabir Pun: We tested 802.11b wireless equipment in 2002 between two villages with the help of a Belgian and a Finnish volunteer. They decided to come to our village after they read about us in the BBC news in 2001. Before that I did not know anything about 802.11b wireless technology. After the testing, we were quite hopeful that the technology would work to network the villages. Therefore we tried to find financial support to install the network. A student at the University of California at Los Angeles got a grant from the Donald Strauss Foundation, which made the project come into a reality. We bought the equipment needed from the grant money.
since1968: Most of my readers are in the United States or Western Europe, and the news we get about Nepal usually relates only to the political situation. Can you talk a bit about day-to-day life?
Mahabir Pun: Whatever you hear about the Maoists fighting and power struggle in Nepal from the media should be mostly true. I live in the mountain and I don’t get to read any news from the newspapers. Perhaps you hear more news about Nepal than the people in the mountains hear.
The Maoists don’t shoot people randomly. As long as they think that there is no threat from an individual or group, one can stay in the villages and work. It is very true that the life has been very difficult to live with the Maoists because they force people to support them. They vitually have control in the rural areas. They are free to move almost everywhere in the mountains because the security forces can’t patrol all the villages. The only way one can survive in the mountain villages is that one should not speak and act anything against them. Even if people don’t agree with or support the Maoists, they have to shut their mouth up to keep themselves alive.
Take my example: I am working in the mountains trying to set up wireless network and trying to bring better educational opportunities for the children living there. The reason I am alive in the mountain and the Maoists have let me stay there is because I have shut my mouth up. Keeping my mouth shut has been the hardest thing for me to do.
since1968: How do the villagers use the networks?
Mahabir Pun: Mostly for communication purposes, since the network is the only means of communication available. The distance from one village to another village is from 8 to 15 miles. The distance to a yak farm from our village is two days walk. The communication between the villages and with the yak hearders has been so easy now. It has saved so much of the villagers’ time.
Although there is a shortage of power at the schools, relay stations, and proxy server station, the villagers still can send and receive their messages through [Microsoft] NetMeeting or through e-mails using our POP server. The POP server is run by Jonni Lehitranta in Finland. We have provided NepalWireless.net accounts to seventy eight people so far and will provide more. Students from two high schools are using the network to write e-mails to each other and to their pen-pals abroad.
Paudwar and Nangi villages are using the network to run their income-producing projects such as yak farming and camping grounds located in the high mountains. Now the management committee of the projects are using the network to communicate with each other and with the yak herders through NetMeeting or email. For that we have given laptops to the camping ground and Yak farming staff. The interesting thing is that the yak herders and the camping ground staff have almost no formal education, and they had never touched the computers before last September.
since1968: As part of a similar project for connecting rural villages in Laos, the developers localized Linux for Laotian users. What operating system do you use? Do you localize for Nepal? If not, why not?
Mahabir Pun: Right now we are using Windows server. Therefore we have not been able to localize the server for Nepal. I know that we can do that with Linux server, but I don’t know much about Linux. One of the volunteers from the US (Philip Mucci) has promised to come to Nepal this year and help us to localize the server, but he is a busy person and he has not decided yet as when he could come.
since1968: I’d like to return briefly to villagers using the computers. Who is in charge of the program in each village? Who controls access to the computers? In one program used to track soy prices in Indian villages, the person put in charge of the computer had marginal social standing. The program found that being able to use the Internet was another avenue of social mobility. Do you see similar patterns of social mobility with your program in Nepal? Is that one of the goals of your program?
Mahabir Pun: Right now the school has been the center for the connection in each village. Therefore one teacher at each school has been working as the “incharge” of the connection. However, our plan is to build a communication center in each village and give the village committee full responsibility to run the center. The committee will choose a person as an “incharge” of the center.
There aren’t much social levels in our society in the mountain villages because most of the people come from the same tribe. All the villagers are farmers and have about the same level of economic status. Therefore I don’t think that the people in our villages will think about moving one step upward in their social status.
since1968: That might surprise a lot of western readers—I think we assume that one of the big reasons for introducing computers to developing countries is for social mobility. You went to college in the US, correct? Can you compare your observations on social mobility here and in Nepal? If social mobility isn’t a goal of introducing wireless networks, isn’t there a risk it will be one of the unintended consequences?
Mahabir Pun: The community in the villages in our region belong to mostly one tribe – Pun Magar. Over 98% of the population in a village come from this tribe. In some of the villages there area few people from other tribe too.
We don’t have any written history of our tribe. Based on the folk tales and oral history our people were originally nomads and used to travel in the mountains hunting wild animals for food. Later they settled in villages and started farming because there were not many wild animals available for hunting. Our people mostly rely on sustainable farming to these days too. Each family have their own land. They raise cattle, goat, and chicken. They grow corn, potato, vegetables, beans, etc, for food. Other than rice, they don’t have to buy food from outside.
Military service is the only source of cash income for the villages. During the First World War and Second World War, the British had recruited young people from our tribe in their army. Since then joining the army has been the main occupation of our people to bring cash income. In the past few years, people have also started going to Gulf countries for work. Other than that there is no source of cash income for the people.
In this way there is not much social levels in term of economic possession in the villages. Moreover, they have the same level socially because they come from the same tribe. They have enough food to eat and they somehow make some money needed to buy clothes and other stuffs for their living. Most of them so far are satisfied with what they have with them.
Therefore most of the people had not thought seriously about sending their children to schools for higher education until two decades back. However, the situation is changing very fast with the coming of new information technologies and building of highways. People in the villages are also learning about different ways of living from different media. Now they are getting more interested about sending their children for higher education so that they can have “better life” other than farming. So far they are not haunted much to make a lots of money and get to higher social status. In this way I can say that our people have just started to think about moving up in social status in term of economic gain.
In this context, my goal of introducing the computers and wireless technology in the rural schools is to provide opportunities for the students to learn about the new technologies and to provide better formal education using the wireless networking technology. That will help to prepare them to compete in the materialistic world to find better jobs. I know how important it is to have better education in order to get better jobs because I have been to school in the US and I have seen it there.
Another goal to bring the technology is to use it for communication purpose. So far the only means of communication that exists is post office. However, not all the villages have post office. The existing rural post offices are not functioning well because of the Maoists rebels. There are no telephones in the mountain villages and it is hard for us to communicate with each other and with the outside world. The reason I am working very hard to network the villages is because I believe that better communication system is important for the overall development of a community and a nation.
However, the fact is that it will take several years for people to seriously think and work hard to adopt the new technologies and get full benefit from them. Even if it is going slow, I would keep working on the project.
since1968: Aside from funding, what were some of your obstacles in launching the program?
Mahabir Pun: Right now there is no main obstacle aside from funding. The Maoists and security forces have let us use the wireless network so far. However, they might come any day and ask us to bring down the connection citing the security reason. If they ask, we have to bring the network down.
The reason we have this fear is that both the security forces and the Maoists have shut down the rural telephone centers if they think that there is danger from the centers for them. There are virtually no rural telephone centers in Nepal now. Some places the maoists have bombed the telephone towers and centers and some places the army has ordered to shut down the centers.
since1968: Good luck with your project and thank you for your time.
Mahabir Pun: Thank you. Please visit our school and village at http://www.himanchal.org.
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2. On Jul 14, 04:01 PM Laurent Condominas said:
Mr.Pun’s attitude not only deserves our admiration but also our keen attention: it reminds us from wealthy country crying for broader broadband, that Internet , as a basic communication tool, can allow communities to survive, litterally. It reminds me of Firstmile solutions and the Jhai Foudation.
Thanks for this great article #
3. On Jul 19, 09:45 PM Thakur Rai said:
Mr. Mahabir Pun is a true self social worker. I have found him as an ordinary man with stand still courage, unlimited village development efforts and works, vision, determination, openly helpful, dignity and faith. He is trustworthy man in this earth, and man with mission and principle.
– Thakur Rai #
1. On Jul 9, 01:02 AM Darren Addy, I.T. Services, UNK said:
Good article!
I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Pun during his time at the University of Nebraska at Kearney. Mahabir’s example and influence have assisted many students from Nepal to attend UNK, where we enjoy a large number of international students (considering our campus is in the very center of the country).
I was impressed with Mahabir’s humble, yet determined “can-do” attitude and his desire to better his home country with his talents and education.
I wish him the best, and encourage all that can to support his project in whatever way you can. #