So I am from India and if you don't know then I have to tell you that Menstruation is a veiled topic of discussion in India. People here shy away from discussing about menstruation and sanitary hygiene in general so what Arunachalam Muruganantham did makes it all the more fascinating.
Arunachalam Muruganantham is the India's Mensuration Man, and you all might be wondering why he has this name?? Before telling you his story let me tell you something about his life and struggles.
Muruganantham was born in 1962 to S. Arunachalam and A. Vanita, hand-loom weavers in Coimbatore, India.
He grew up in poverty after his father died in a road accident.
His mother worked as a farm laborer to help in his studies.
However, at the age of 14, he dropped out of school and supplied food to factory workers and took up various jobs as machine tool operator, yam selling agent, farm laborer, welder, etc. to support his family
So he had it pretty rough growing up as a child and one can only imagine the hardships that he must have faced.
Arunachalam Muruganantham
He is a social entrepreneur from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India. He is the inventor of a low-cost sanitary pad making machine and has innovated grass-roots mechanisms for generating awareness about traditional unhygienic practices around menstruation in rural India.
How his journey started
In 1998, he got married to "Shanthi". Shortly after, Murugananthan discovered his wife collecting filthy rags and newspapers to use during her menstrual cycle, as sanitary napkins made by multinational corporations were expensive.
He was shocked to see this.
He decided to produce her sanitary pads himself. At first it seemed a simple task: he bought a roll of cotton wool and cut it into pieces, the same size as the pads sold in the shops, and then wrapped a thin layer of cotton around it.
He presented this homemade prototype pad to his wife and asked her to test it. The feedback she gave him was devastating:
his pad was useless and she would rather continue using old rags.
Putting in the hard yards
After getting the awful reviews from his wife he was determine to find out where he went wrong? What was the difference between his sanitary pads and those available at the shop?
So he started started experimenting with different materials, but was faced with another problem:
he always had to wait a month before his wife could test each new prototype.
He needed volunteers so he asked some medical students at a university close to his village to try his different prototypes. Some of them actually tested his pads but they were too shy to give him detailed feedback.
Left with no alternative, he decided to test the sanitary pads himself.
He built a uterus using a rubber bladder, filled it with animal blood and fixed it to his hip. A tube led from the artificial uterus to the sanitary pad in his underpants.
By pressing the bladder he simulated the menstrual flow.
Being ridiculed
On trying out the pads on himself he often used to smell foul and his clothes were often stained with blood.
His neighbours soon noticed this.
They thought of him as ill or perverted man.
After a while his wife couldn’t stand the constant gossip. She left him and went to live with her mother.
Determined to reach his goal
Muruganantham didn’t give up. He knew why he was going through all this.
During his research he had learned that only ten to twenty percent of all girls and women in India have access to proper menstrual hygiene products.
This was no longer just about helping his wife.
Muruga was on mission and the mission was
to produce low-cost sanitary pads for all the girls and women in his country.
Hardwork Paying off
It was two years before he finally found the right material and another four years before he developed a way to process it.
The result was an easy-to-use machine for producing low-cost sanitary pads.
In 2006, when he visited IIT Madras to show his idea and got suggestions. They registered his invention for the National Innovation Foundation's Grassroots Technological Innovations Award and his idea won the award.
He obtained seed funding and founded Jayaashree Industries, which now markets these machines to rural women across India.
The machine has been praised for its simplicity and cost-effectiveness, and his commitment to social aid has earned him several awards.
Imported machines cost over US$500,000. Muruga’s machine, by contrast, is priced at US$950.
Now women’s groups or schools can buy his machine, produce their own sanitary pads and sell the surplus. In this way, Muruga’s machine has created jobs for women in rural India.
He has started a revolution in his own country, selling 1,300 machines to 27 states, and has recently begun exporting them to developing countries all over the world.
Staying away from Corporate Greed
Despite offers from several corporate entities to commercialize his venture, he has refused to sell out and continues to provide these machines to self-help groups (SHGs) run by women.
Muruganantham's invention is widely praised as a key step in changing women's lives in India.
Muruganantham's machine creates jobs and income for many women, and affordable pads enable many more women to earn their livelihood during menstruation.
Recognition
Today he is one of India’s most well-known social entrepreneurs and TIME magazine named him one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2014.
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