He has been given a prestigious spot in TIME Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World (2014). In 2016, the Government of India awarded him a Padma Shri. He owns an industry that he built all by himself. His life story was retold by Twinkle Khanna in her book, The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, and a movie by the name of Padman starring Akshay Kumar is in the making which portrays his journey. Sound like an extraordinary man, doesn’t he?
This 55 year old man from Tamil Nadu, dropped out of school at the young age of 14. He isn’t sponsored by any large scale corporates and he most certainly isn’t conventional in his success. Then how is it that he has created a roaring revolution in rural India? What makes him extraordinary? Let us look at his story:
Born in 1962 in South India, Arunachalam Muruganantham grew up mostly in poverty. His parents were handloom weavers in Coimbatore. Unfortunately, his father passed away in a road accident when Muruganantham was quite young. Loss of the bread- winner for the family clearly hit them hard and Muruganantham was forced to drop out from school to work. His mother worked as a farm laborer, but it wasn’t enough for his studies. Muruganantham then started working odd jobs- he would supply food to factory workers, operate machine tools, sell yams as an agent, labor on the farm, or work as a welder.
Muruganantham was living a life of basic necessities. Things changed for him after he got married to a girl named Shanthi in 1998. One day, he saw his wife hurrying into the loo as she hid something in her hands behind her back. Muruganantham was confused as to why she would do that, and pestered her to come out with the truth. Menstruation and Sex were then (and still are to a great extent) taboos in India; Muruganantham was not too familiar with the female issues having been brought up in a village that was old school. Shanthi eventually explained that she was hiding a rag she used during periods. Muruganantham was quite disturbed that his wife, mother, sister, and other women in the village used filthy rags and newspapers for their cycles. He felt, and rightly so, that they were not sanitary and surely caused a lot of discomfort. His wife told him that if she were to use proper sanitary napkins, she would have to spend a lot which meant cutting down on their ‘milk budget’. Muruganantham could smell negative aspects of commercialization by multinationals in this industry in that tiny discussion, and decided that he had to do something to help the women around him.
Muruganantham bought a sanitary napkin and tried to decipher what went into its making. He couldn’t understand why a long piece of flattened ‘cotton’ was so expensive. Raw materials that cost 10 paise, were being converted to a product that was sold for 40 times that price. He decided to make a cheaper, but equally effective and safe napkin. He tried a lot of methods, but to see if they were effective, he asked his wife to try them out. When his wife stopped cooperating with him in project because she couldn’t understand why her husband was worrying over a ‘woman’s problem’, he asked his sisters for help. Even they refused. Then, he asked help from some girls studying in a medical college nearby who were extremely shy too and reluctant to speak about this issue with him. No one wanted to be test subjects for his experiments.
Muruganantham was not easily deterred though. He was willful in his approach and decided to test them out himself! He constructed a make- shift bladder with a pump for himself which he would fill with animal blood. For five days, he would go about his normal work- cycle, work in the farms et al- and keep pumping the blood with his rudimentary machine to test out his home- made sanitary napkin. He says he will never forget how horribly uncomfortable those days were to him, which made him have greater respect for women who go through the messiness every month. Eventually, Muruganantham’s secret got out and the entire village turned against him. His family and community ostracized him and he became a subject of ridicule amongst all.
One can imagine how dejected Muruganantham must have been. Here he was, trying to do something worthwhile for society, but he was not garnering any kind of support. For the next two years, he kept his research on. He came to understand that the commercial sanitary napkins are made of cellulose fibres derived from pine bark wood pulp, which lends to the retention of shape and absorption powers of the pad. The machine used for this purpose would cost him about 3.5 crore rupees. This was when he realized that he needed to invent a budget machine for this purpose. After a lot of hard work, he devised a working model which would cost Rs. 65,000 only. He sourced processed pulp from Mumbai and used it in his machine which would grind, de- fibrate, press, and sterilize the pads. They required minimal training of the people using them, so the convenience of use was also a part of his genius. Then the pads would be packaged for sale.
This relatively low- cost machine was estimated to bring down the cost of a sanitary napkin by 1/3rd of the commercial value. Muruganantham was delighted but he knew that this machine had to be cautiously distributed. He was clear in his head- he was not to run after money or be greedy for large- scale commercialization processes. He wanted to do something for the society, to bring change in the lives of women across the nation.
In 2006, he visited IIT Madras to showcase his venture and seek suggestions. Based on their assistance, he registered his invention for the National Innovation Foundation’s Grassroots Technological Innovations Award, which he consequently won. He received some funding for the same and established Jayashree Industries, which is wholly committed to the purpose of making low- cost sanitary napkins for rural India, and spreading awareness of hygienic practices in context of menstruation. His ideas spread like wildfire amongst the rural women when they were informed properly of the benefits and cost reductions. Eventually, a media house did a cover story on him, and then he gained nation- wide popularity for his courage and genius. He has been in this business for about seven years now, and his machines have been installed in 23 of 29 states in India. He is planning on expanding the reach of these machines to 106 nations now!
His commitment to social aid is what sets him apart. He refuses to sell out his idea and provides machines only to self- help groups run by women. About 21,000 women are currently involved in this work, and have gained independence through it.
Muruganantham has been monumental in bringing about a massive change in people’s lives, and he continues to do so. He dreams of a 100% sanitary India where all women and girls are educated appropriately about menstruation and hygiene and use sanitary napkins. He also continues to create employment for rural women. He says he wishes to be a ‘solution provider’ and not a commodity or corporate entity. He equates his work to an open software, which can be used by one and all. He feels that if he (being a school dropout) can do this much for his people, there is no limit to what the highly educated can achieve for the nation!
Muruganantham’s work has inspired many others to turn entrepreneurs in this area and also research better methods for this purpose. We are so proud to have people like Muruganantham in our country, who proves that one man CAN make a difference.
