17 ms·
The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- visakanv 13y agoWhat a classic Hero's Journey story- man encounters difficulty experienced by his loved one, tries to solve her problem efficiently, loses her in the process, becomes an outcast, persists, finds meaning in his work, receives help, is humble, helps people at an epic scale, reunites with his wife, happy ending, better world, triumph over ignorance and hardship.
- shiven 13y agoYou may also find this real-life story inspiring ... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi One man's epic struggle against the landscape, to not let others suffer as he did.
- gknoy 13y agoThat was amazing. Thank you for sharing that.
- visakanv 13y agoI also know of another guy who planted an entire forest: http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/indian-man-who-planted-1360-acre-forest-now-plans-plant-another.html http://www.treehugger.com/natural-sciences/indian-man-who-pl...
- tamersalama 13y agoOT: I liked how the article was written.
- NathanOsullivan 13y agoSo after all that he managed to lower the price from £0.04 to £0.025 ... is that a meaningful reduction?
- primitivesuave 13y agoNow it's creating employment for women within the villages and being sold for a lower price, while it previously was being mass produced by machinery and sold at a much higher profit margin. You're right though, to the end consumer it's not that meaningful of a reduction, especially since it is an expense that is only incurred once a month.
- arjn 13y agoFor a poor family in India (and there are many), the short answer is "yes". For a longer answer you may want to consider the personal and social hurdles he had to overcome and that not all gains are measured in money.
- lostlogin 13y agoTo add to your answer, the article mentioned his mother on $1 per day with 4 kids. I suspect any reduction in price matters.
- qwerta 13y ago> women's self-help groups Community wide DIY. So yes it makes sense.
- lnanek2 13y agoWell and people are making them locally in their villages and colleges instead of buying international, and mostly women at that. I know American cities that are always struggling to keep mom and pop shops alive vs. the big boxes. Meanwhile everyone says Japan's only hope to keep their labor pool growing against their greying population is to start getting women involved. So he pulled off something America and Japan are struggling with.
- 13y ago
- primitivesuave 13y ago> He believes that big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas he prefers the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," he says. What a profound and inspiring worldview.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- arjn 13y agoIndeed. Here's another one : "Luckily I'm not educated," he tells students. "If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."
- thaumasiotes 13y agoPerhaps, but the difference between butterflies and mosquitoes isn't really in damage to the food (virtually zero in both cases)... it's in the fact that butterflies perform a service (pollination) for the flowers. Mosquitoes quite literally live and die by the lightness of their touch; compare the survival rates of human-feeding mosquitoes (not 100%, but not far off) and human-feeding horseflies (0%).
- Udo 13y agoThis is an amazingly inspiring story, I love the entrepreneurial spirit and dedication of Mr Muruganantham. However, there is a bigger story hiding behind this personal triumph. It's clear that people living in impoverished areas are not in a position to buy sanitary products at market rates (being sold at a margin of 4000% or more). But for example many do have access to cheap raw materials. It makes a ton of sense to simply make that stuff locally for a fraction of the cost, and with that comes a much greater independence for those poor regions. Let's hope that in time this becomes a trend that expands to many industries.
- igul222 13y agoThe article mentions that commercial napkins sold for 4 rupees despite cotton being 1/4000th the cost, but also says farther down that the locally produced ones sell for an average of 2.5 rupees each. That's a 38% discount: significant, but it doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me. I imagine that if this catches on, the larger manufacturers will likely just cut their margins to compete. On a more general note, one of the big reasons for the Industrial Revolution's switch to mass-production was that making goods in huge factories is more efficient, and ultimately cheaper, than producing them locally in small quantities. Economies of scale are powerful.
- kamaal 13y ago>>Economies of scale are powerful. A lot of companies dealing with products like these spend insane money on advertising, marketing and other mechanisms to sell their product. I think Pepsi can sell their drink at 1/10th price if they dropped the ads, sponsorships, marketing etc. And not to mention. People themselves perceive cheaper products as that of low quality.
- maaaats 13y ago>> doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me The big difference here is that there is women selling these in private to other women. No man behind a counter. When the women come together about this, it may end up not being such a taboo, and they get advise on how to actually do this. So the game changer here isn't the price, but the community and independence for the women evolving around this product.
- qwerta 13y agoI like this article a lot. Similar problem was in communist Czechoslovakia. There was only one factory making hygiene products for entire country, but it burned down on second year of 5 year plan. Central planning committee could not be arsed to change the plan...
- hedges 13y agoWhile pursuing his entrepreneurial dream, he walked around asking women for their used sanitary pads (while most men struggle to ask for a date), almost gets tied to a tree when a witch doctor incites the local villagers against him, has his wife leave him (only to come back after his success), and even his mother abandoned him; still he goes on. And then, even after having practically everyone around him ostracize and abandon him, he doesn't go for the money, but remains humble and does the best he can to make the world a better place.
- Shivetya 13y agoshe did not return because of his success, she returned because he was no longer bringing shame upon his family. As the article mentions, there many taboos in their society, there is the caste system that provides separation (even tint of skin can) and of course separation of sexes. So his single minded pursuit made life untenable for her where they lived, it even drove off his own mother. You did note that she merely went back to her mom, she didn't run off with another man. Essentially, she was waiting till he either gave up the pursuit or succeeded, I am quite sure they would be together regardless. Hell there is odd separation in the states amongst some of the workers from that country. You can see it in the groupings, who has lunch together, those who walk apart or turn down a hall when meeting
- vineetraja 13y ago>> the caste system that provides separation (even tint of skin can) are you suggesting that caste system is related to skin color?
- arjn 13y agoThose who aren't from the Subcontinent may not fully appreciate this man's achievement. I'm very impressed by his dedication, perseverance and inspiring outlook on life.
- gadders 13y agoHe deserves some sort of Nobel prize.
- andrelaszlo 13y ago"If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom - and then you die." Something to think about.
- IE5point5 13y ago[ ] Hacker News [X] Not Hacker News
- PhantomGremlin 13y agoContrast this grass roots effort with OLPC, a grandiose plan to distribute One Laptop per Child to the third world. The best quip I ever read about that was: "OLPC is a rich man's idea of what poor men need. It's like donating an expresso machine to a homeless shelter." Instead, as the article makes clear, many poor villages don't even have ready access to clean water. This one humble guy has done more good for more people in India than 1000 grandiose schemes such as OLPC. And he wants to expand to 106 countries. I wish him well.
- vacri 13y agoIt's not a competition. Also, does your quipper think that women aren't important? I always find it amusing when people wax philosophical about equality whilst retreating into sexist terminology to do so. Instead of 'poor men', 'the poor' or 'poor people' works to the same effect.
- sliverstorm 13y agoOLPC was created by a man (hence 'rich man'), and rich man/poor man is a more powerful literary device than rich man/the poor.
- vacri 13y agoI'm aware of all that. I didn't say boo to 'rich man', because it is driven by Negroponte. I recognized the literary device with 'wax philosophical'. It's still someone trying to play the oneupmanship game on equality while at the same time perpetuating sexism. It's a shitty thing to do to merely 'sound cool' - selling out ideals for demagoguery. English is a wonderfully flexible language and there are a dozen different ways to say the same thing here. Hand-waving away the hypocrisy in that statement as being a more powerful (barely, at that) literary device is just being lazy. I'd also counter that the proper literary device is 'rich man/poor mAn', not 'rich man/poor mEn'. A small but meaningful difference.
- vidarh 13y ago> Instead, as the article makes clear, many poor villages don't even have ready access to clean water. Not that tired old argument again. Yes, it is true. But lots also do. And lots have cellular broadband, and tons of relatively poor people have access to smartphones. Not all of the third world is the same. And looking at the OLPC site now, they're up to 2.4 million of the thing. Not quite the numbers they'd hoped for, perhaps, but still 2.4 million children in developing countries who now have access to computing. There's room for projects trying to address more than one issue, for more than one group of people.
- kamaal 13y agoAs an Indian, I can see what pain this guy went through. Fighting the society to build a start up like this, with this kind of taboo attached to the product? All the best trying to build a start up at the first place. You are almost treated like you are doing it because you absolutely are incapable of doing anything else. And having the gumption to fight years of laughter, isolation, mockery and ridicule to only chase what you believe in is a very different thing than just building a company. You are fighting forces that you would do anything to see you fail. And this is beyond the merit of your product. I salute this guy for not just what he has achieved. Though the margins he achieved will be eventually matched by bigger companies. In many ways this is like the first man climbing the Everest or first space agency going to the moon. Others have been there after the first attempt. But the people who do it first, face significant obstacles. And they inspire all of us.
- einhverfr 13y agoI don't know that the bigger companies will achieve the success. This guy's brilliance is in grasping the same economic reality that exists behind open source software, namely that the wider dispersed ownership of the tools one uses to produce things are, the easier it is to achieve long-term success.
- StavrosK 13y agoYeah but I made an app to send your friends links with one less click!
- general_failure 13y agoHere take a billion.
- anon4 13y agoPshaw. I'm releasing an app tomorrow that sends your friends links unless you click. It takes -1 clicks to send a link, so I'm calling it the -1ink.
- fractalb 13y agoI also appreciate this man's efforts. But I slightly disagree with your view point. He never tried to build a startup, he just tried to solve a problem in our society. All these news about businesses and startups corrupted our mind, aren't they?
- einhverfr 13y agoThere's a lot to this article. See how the distributed form of production really works, and these sanitary pad machines really aren't that different from open source software. See how they change the world and again, the distributed ownership and small business approach does it. And additionally, why it is never a good idea to underestimate someone because of a lack of formal education.
- avighnay 13y agoIt is even better hearing the story from him straight http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4_MeS6SOwk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4_MeS6SOwk
- saevarom 13y ago"He fashioned a sanitary pad out of cotton and gave it to Shanthi, demanding immediate feedback. She said he'd have to wait for some time - only then did he realise that periods were monthly. 'I can't wait a month for each feedback, it'll take two decades!'" Sounds like he got a pretty solid biology lesson along the way.
- adaml_623 13y agoThat quote emphasised to me how dangerous ignorance is and how important education is in this world.
- simsalapim 13y agoOr you just get menstruation cups? Might be a bit more expensive initially but cheaper longterm and a lot more environmentally friendly. http://www.ruby-cup.com/en/ http://www.ruby-cup.com/en/
- callum85 13y agoI know two women who have tried those. In both cases they tried for several months to get used to them, but they gave up eventually because they're so unpleasant to use, and it never gets any easier. Apparently.
- simsalapim 13y agoUsing one myself and best thing I've ever tried! Takes some practice but once you got the hang of it it works great. But think it's different from woman to woman!
- gms7777 13y agoThere are women who find that menstrual cups aren't for them, but in my experience, they tend to be the exception. Using one myself, and having turned many of my friends onto them, they're generally hailed as the greatest thing ever invented around here. Not to say theres anything wrong with your friends, because everyone likes what they likes, just wanted to throw my own experience.
- krrrh 13y agoI feel like most of the university-educated young women I know use Diva Cups or Keepers (and many don't mind talking about them and promoting them to others or I wouldn't know that). I think their usage really depends on local culture, social norms, propensity to shop in organic grocery stores where they are often sold, etc.. The first women I knew who used them started in the early nineties.
- hereonbusiness 13y agoCups seem a lot more expensive, you can buy almost 700 sanitary pads for the retail price of 1 ruby cup ($28 ~ 1735 rupees). Also, the pads are more available and create jobs for women in rural areas because they are produced and sold locally. I would give this one to Muruganantham.
- desouzt 13y ago"Luckily I'm not educated," he tells students. "If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future." Love this quote!
- intull 13y agoI'm so glad this made it to HN. From an Indian societal perspective, what he achieved is just marvellous and outstanding! It takes tremendous courage and determination to do something like this in India! Salute to this man!
- davedx 13y agoIf you are as inspired by this story as I was, you can mail him here: muruganantham_in@yahoo.com (His email address is public on his company's site [1]) [1] http://newinventions.in/contactus.aspx http://newinventions.in/contactus.aspx
- eyeareque 13y agoI really enjoyed this story and remember first hearing about him a few years ago. Truly inspiring man. It makes me wonder, how many other people are out there who have the same passion for something, but haven't had any success? Only a select few will have success, most will fail. I think we should celebrate the people who took risks and failed too. But sadly you won't find articles written about them as it isn't a happy ending like this one.
- dsego 13y agoWhy buy disposable pads when you can use rags and wash them? Same for diapers.
- jsmeaton 13y agoIt says so in the article. Women felt shame leaving them out to dry since the subject is so taboo.
- noselasd 13y agoI'd also imagine regular washing such rags in overcrowded areas with an absence of infrastructure can cause issues - as would it be in places where people (mainly women) need to spend a significant amount of the day just to get hold of water.
- denzil_correa 13y ago> Why buy disposable pads when you can use rags and wash them? Hygiene
- thaumasiotes 13y ago> Same for diapers. Much of the point of having any money at all is so I can avoid doing things I hate doing. Are things really so different for you?
- logfromblammo 13y agoWhy use washable rags when you can use a diva cup? I suspect the answer is the same in both cases: lack of clean water and effective sterilization methods. If you wash your rags in dirty water and do not expose them to the sterilizing UV rays of direct sunlight, you're giving yourself infections. The machine uses a UV light to sterlize, and does not require a reliable water supply. When every village in India has access to ample amounts of clean-from-the-tap water, they may choose to revisit their current solution.
- khc 13y agoSo the trick is: lie to existing manufacturers to get the schematics, build simplified/more manual machines, use really cheap labors, and probably lower the profit margin? Reminds me of knockoff products but then it's probably a phase that developing countries go through.
- hoggle 13y agoThe trick is to love yourself.
- dirkgently 13y agoNo. The real trick is to puke at such comments.
- keithxm23 13y agoHere's a link to his very inspiring TED Talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_sta...
- dirkgently 13y agoJesus. Why does TED has to go and spoil every fucking good thing?
- Borogravia 13y agoBecause all good things must come only from TED, so we eventually start thinking of good things as TED things.
- diydsp 13y agoI believe TED is not about presenting tech as a "savior." I believe TED is a sandbox for a number of powerful people to work out their interpersonal arguments about whether tech is good for the world or not. As such you will hear all presentations subtly presented in this light without the participants (presenters nor audience members) being aware. It's essentially a gladiatorial arena funded by the well-to-do, cleverly disguised as another "gee whiz" tech conference. As such, stories and material are distorted toward arguing the spectral ends of the conference creators. This is why there are so many stories presented that "make tech look silly, bad or overextended." They're placements by forces within the internal TED conflict that are trying to diminish public opinion about the benefits of technological practice. Make no mistake- these people are happy to see TED come off as foolish or ruinous, b/c it supports their contingent's goals. They have founded TED with the intention of presenting foolish ideas to tarnish the concept of technology as a practice. So, the age old advice applies here - take everything with a grain of salt. When you hear a presentation, get what you can out of it, realize it's not the full picture and seek out the missing pieces. Do not rely on TED for a coherent or complete picture of anything. It's just an artifact of debating idealogues.
- PhasmaFelis 13y agoWhat is with this ridiculous knee-jerk reaction against anything TED? If that video had been exactly the same except for the TED name, you would've been fine with it. But you've decided TED must be bad, and therefore anything connected with TED is also bad. Lose the silly bias and let good things be good things.
- grdvnl 13y ago> "You always have a girl in white jeans, jumping over a wall," he says. "They never talk about hygiene." Look's like the marketing folks at P&G were selling this stuff to the mostly affluent. Therefore, I am guessing they never bothered to sell the hygiene angle.
- fromdoon 13y agoYou have to hear him talk ... http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_sta... He is so full of energy and his straight talk will win your heart ... What a person ... cheers ..
- grdvnl 13y ago> "You always have a girl in white jeans, jumping over a wall," he says. "They never talk about hygiene." Look's like the marketing folks at P&G were selling this stuff to the mostly affluent. Therefore, I am guessing they never bothered to sell the hygiene angle.
- jaldoretta 13y agoI'm a female founder in the US with a startup that has to do with menstruation, and I cannot even begin to tell you how uncomfortable people (male and female) get when I talk with them about it. For a man in India (where this topic is exponentially more taboo) to undertake a business like this and persist despite the backlash is so incredibly inspiring. The benefit of his business goes so far beyond simply reducing napkin prices...he's helping to break down taboos that exist in India (and across the globe), and giving women opportunities (not to mention more knowledge and confidence about their bodies) that they never would have had otherwise. Absolutely amazing.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- araneae 13y agoVery cool! I use cycle for this which only does averaging, which works okay but it's seriously old and clonky. I was wondering why someone hadn't done this already.
- jaldoretta 13y agoYes...there are plenty of old and clunky apps out there for this =) We're hoping to change that. I really want this space to become something that men and women, alike, will talk about. Good UI and UX has been missing, and women definitely deserve better.
- EricaJoy 13y agoIf your company can put out an Android app that can do everything Ovuview Pro can do and include Google Calendar integration (if I want to share my cycle calendar with my S/O), I'd switch immediately.
- geekam 13y agohttp://readytogroove.com/ http://readytogroove.com/ looks like a nice app. I have to try that.
- nate_meurer 13y agoI want to hug this guy. Like, really. Buy me a airplane ticket. Arunachalam Muruganantham is a hero. I use that word in its full magnitude. Since I am now an expert on the matter, having read the entire article, I'll speculate on what motivates this man: - Grit. Crazy amounts of grit. The article is full of good quotes, but my favorite is what he said after being abandoned by his mother: "It was a problem for me," he says. "I had to cook my own food." - Humility combined with hunger: "Luckily I'm not educated," he tells students. "If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future." "Every time he comes to know something new, he wants to know everything about it," [his wife] says. - Love of humanity, on some level at least: "Anyone with an MBA would immediately accumulate the maximum money. But I did not want to. Why? Because from childhood I know no human being died because of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance." As an aside, I LOVE the picture of his wife and daughter toward the end. This one photograph lends better context to the story than all the others combined. I know a single picture means nothing, but the look in his daughter's eyes makes me think she'll inherit something of her dad's baddassness. And as another aside, bloody god-damn fucking hell, are the following bits really true? There are still many taboos around menstruation in India. Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply - essentially they are considered untouchable. There are also myths and fears surrounding the use of sanitary pads - that women who use them will go blind, for example, or will never get married.
- dspillett 13y ago> are the following bits really true? Unfortunately yes, and it isn't just in India. Many religions (if the relevant magic texts are followed literally and/or followed by the more aggressive interpretations) consider menstruating women to be a curse upon the world to be shunned until they get their shit together and stop all that bleeding nonsense.
- BhavdeepSethi 13y ago"Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply". I've seen educated folks doing this as well, so, sadly yes. It is true. Most women follow it because their mothers/sisters have been doing it. Since it is so common, people tend to accept these superstitions more easily.
- neotrinity 13y agoHe has given a ted talk in bangalore http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_sta...
- enscr 13y agoThat's a LOT of determination. I'm amazed by his courage. There must be more to the story that was left out. Salute to the gentleman. A godsend.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- rootuid 13y agoWhat a bloody mess !
- wehadfun 13y agothis guy is awesome
- hislaziness 13y agoI see a lot of comments discussing the cost. I do not think cost (or profits) were the driver. Surely higher cost make it difficult for poor to acquire the pads but the taboo is a much bigger hurdle to cross, which this gentleman has amazingly addressed.
- wtbob 13y ago> He believes that big business is parasitic, like a mosquito, whereas he prefers the lighter touch, like that of a butterfly. "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it," he says. While I don't believe that big business is necessarily parasitic, I love this metaphor.
- njharman 13y agoFavorite business advice "quote"? / paraphrase. Be like a butterfly, taking some nectar but not damaging the flower. Not not like the mosquito, a parasite.
- shreeshga 13y agohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T7qzufEI9U http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T7qzufEI9U I think this is his best speech, straight from heart.
- erikpukinskis 13y agoThe optimal technical solution to this problem, for the vast majority of the population, is menstrual cups. They are completely reusable and generally perform better. To me the long term challenge is the social problem of convincing people that menstrual cups are not gross and are not going to hurt them. I totally respect this guy for finding an intermediate solution that helps his community though. I don't live in India so I have no idea what the specific cultural challenges are.
- mzs 13y agoDon't know about that. From talking with my wife they are very messy and need to be cleaned a lot or they smell, like boiled every day or two - so that's why there are disposable ones and they are more popular. Also you need a lot of clean tissues each time you insert, rinse, and replace it - which brings you right back to the using dirty rags again cause there is stigma to clean and dry them properly in those cultures. Anyway her ob/gyn told her to stop using them when she got a IUD, and that's another issue with them.
- scarecrowbob 13y agoMy wife has had a different experience; she reports she's quite happy with hers and it requires less maintenance than alternatives. Of course, this is a very small sample size, a second hand report, and, of course, still surrounded by all the attendant larger issues....
- erikpukinskis 13y agoIt sounds like your wife is the kind of person who wants her body to be completely free of any sort of body smells and doesn't want to come in contact with any kind of body fluids. Those are exactly what I was referring to when I said there is cultural resistance. My community are "pro-natural" and don't have issue with the smell, nor do they use tissues. They just use their hands and believe that vaginas and menstrual fluid have scents and that it's ok. It's just cultural differences.
- mzs 13y ago
- rajneesh1315 13y agoI am from north India and agree that menstruation is still taboo in our culture (mostly in villages). -During menstruation cycle women (mostly married) sleep in separate room, they are not supposed to touch anything and after 4 days all the clothes/bedding they wear/use (even mattress) will be washed. -Most of these rules are tied to religion. -I think when these "rules" were started there were no sanitary pads, so may be this was done for hygiene sake, but today it doesn't make any sense. And I think in those days if someone wanted people to follow anything just say its required by your religion and people will blindly follow. -This guy is doing really great work, happy that BBC picked it up.
- noisyboy 13y agoI'm a bit tired of most of the taboos/problems of India being "mostly in villages". My entire family are city dwellers and every time there is an commercial for sanitary napkins on TV, the women have an expression of embarrassment and can't wait for it to get over (whereas scenes of violence from the movies are received perfectly fine).
- rhc2104 13y agoIs money a bottleneck to getting more of these machines out? If so, what charity would someone donate to?
- alphakappa 13y ago"If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom - and then you die." Crap, I don't think I've read anything that has hit me harder.
- cdelsolar 13y agoThis is an amazing story!
- lkrubner 13y agoI have read a lot on the subject of how civil rights and the rule of law allowed the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, and this story reminds of that earlier epoch. As late as the 1670s, England was still burning witches (male and female) at the stake, to punish them for their witchcraft. But then Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 brings in a new regime, the English Bill of Rights of 1689 ensures everyone a trial if they are accused, everyone has civil rights, and suddenly, among the legal and intellectual elites, it becomes widely understood that witchcraft does not actually exist, everything can be explained by science, and people doing weird stuff need to have their civil rights protected. And by the early 1700s men like Jethro Tull and Charles Townsend kick off the Agricultural Revolution, doing weird stuff like feeding turnips to cows and collecting all the manure -- spooky weird stuff that might have gotten them accused of witchcraft just 30 years earlier. And this story reminds of that earlier epoch. When you bring in real innovation (innovation that touches upon people's profoundest taboo's and fears) you either have civil rights, or you end up dead. And it does say something hopeful about India that this man knew his basic civil rights were going to protect him from accusations of witchcraft. Though, of course, this part suggests that India could still improve its protections quite a bit: "Worse was to come. The villagers became convinced he was possessed by evil spirits, and were about to chain him upside down to a tree to be "healed" by the local soothsayer. He only narrowly avoided this treatment by agreeing to leave the village. It was a terrible price to pay. "My wife gone, my mum gone, ostracised by my village" he says. "I was left all alone in life.""
- tn13 13y agoThis is something that makes me both proud and sad about my home country India. We are still struggling with some of the basic problems that the developed world probably solved 100 years back. It makes me even more sad that just 60 years back India was hardly behind any other developed country. Arunchalam's example is also a classic case of how Indian government has destroyed India's entrepreneurial zeal. When Arun introduced his cheap sanitary pad making machine, Indian government woke up and see an opportunity to gain votes of poor and goodwill of large companies. Indian government came up with a scheme where poor women will get a "fixed" quota per month of sanitary pads paid for by tax payers. --- Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) is set to embark upon an ambitious programme, reports The Hindu on 21st February 2010, to reach about 200 million women with 100 sanitary pads per person per annum with a budget of some INR 20 billion in next 3 to 6 months. -- [Source: One of the email threads I was exchanging on this matter with a friend in government] This is another Indian government scam where big companies like Johnson and Johnson etc. will provide these pads at taxpayers cost to the poor women while politicians will take their cut. Going by past experience even the pads wont reach the women. Those who might be aware of India's economic history, it is full of such scams. Indian government often ran government sponsored health campaigns claiming things like - "Wash your hands with soap after and before having food and going to toilet else it will will cause diseases." - "Use iodized salt in food else your children will be born retarded". - "Use toothbrush and toothpaste" The reality is, even in rural areas the level of hygiene is way better. People used handmade soaps and herbal alternatives for soap. (Even I used them in my childhood). During my childhood oral hygiene involved brushing teeth with 5 different types of leaves, gargling with hot water mixed with a mixture of 15 different kind of powders which were comprised of different kind of tree skins, herbs and roots. My father still knows the formula and I used it successfully when I developed a gum related infection. And you know what? Indians used plenty of sea salt in their food. We ate salted fish, Salted Pickles and what not. Today it so happens that all these small scale industries are already dead. Not because they failed to innovate or compete on price. (In reality some companies like Vico succeeded with these traditional products) They failed because government actively tried to kill them in the name of public welfare. Today I am buying a Colegate toothpaste which claims to contain "sea salt". The TV ad of this toothpaste shows a grandpa showing his grandson that his teeth are stronger at 80 purely because he used sea salt to brush his teeth in past. There are other companies out there which are selling toothpastes claiming to contain the exact same herbs that we used in past (Miswaak, Babool etc.) When I visit Target and Wallmart I often see shelves full of crudely packaged soaps titled "Handmade Soap" selling at 3x the price of normal soap. I feel sad for Arunachalam and many other people I know who are mad just like him because rest of us Indian citizens have failed to make a political choice which would have heralded these men as heroes. Unsolicited Advice to Americans: I see American government taking same direction as that of Indian government in past and present. Pushing private interests of few in the name of poor. Buying votes by redistribution of wealth while wrecking incentives to be innovative. I might be wrong. But there is no cost to being cautious.
- iscrewyou 13y agoHere come the patent holders...
- seige 13y agoThere is another initiative that is approaching the problem from a different lens. Its called Menstrupedia (www.menstrupedia.com). They are making an educational book in comic book format to dispel the massive amounts of myths around the topic.
- kimonos 13y agoTwo thumbs up for this guy!
- neves 13y agoThanks for the link. We think it is difficult to see from the point of view of our users. This guy proved quite the contrary. One of the best stories I've ever read here.
- ilaksh 13y agoThe main problem is inhumane inequality. All of these "developing nations" are poor because they are oppressed and excluded by the financial powers. "Developing nation" is a racist term that attempts to cover economic neglect and oppression.
- melindajb 13y agoThe next time someone complains about how hard startups are, show them this. Until you've walked around with a soccer ball full of goat's blood in your pants, after your wife and mother have abandoned you, you have nothing to complain about.
- anilgulecha 13y ago"Until you've walked around with a soccer ball full of goat's blood in your pants, after your wife and mother have abandoned you, you have nothing to complain about." Ha, awesome!
- elwell 13y ago> "A butterfly can suck honey from the flower without damaging it"
- xj 13y agoHe truly belongs to the breed that Apple's 'Think Different' commercial describes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SswMzUWOiJg http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SswMzUWOiJg Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do. - Apple Inc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Think_Different
- sciencesama 13y agohttp://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_started_a_sanitary_napkin_revolution http://www.ted.com/talks/arunachalam_muruganantham_how_i_sta...
- not_that_noob 13y agoPg - is there a new comment filtering system? An article on sanitary napkins, and no immature rag jokes? Is this really HN? :)
- imaginary_bird 13y agoWhile this man seems amazing and has done a great thing for a lot of women, it's a shame that the main problem still remains. Menstruation is still taboo, both in the west and in India. It would be nice if instead of importing the western method of dealing with it (using sanitary pads to dispose of our menstrual blood secretly and in the process creating mountains of rubbish - where do all the blood-stained "sanitary" napkins go?) the women could just wash their cloth pads and dry them in the sun. It seems quite terrible environmentally. I'm a woman and grew up using disposable menstrual products. I only started using reusable ones when I was thirty because I have endometriosis that causes heavy bleeding (so I have to use postpartum type pads) and it weighed on my mind to be throwing them out all the time. Now I feel terrible about all those years. I don't need to wash them in hot water because it's sunny where I live. But I hide the bucket that I soak them in and I hang them out when my husband is not at home so he doesn't have to see them. Thankfully, I don't have to be so secretive about our baby's nappies.