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The beginnings of 2017 saw the ace Akshay Kumar announce his upcoming biographical film, Padman. As the masses get curious to learn who this Padman is, light is thrown once more on an Indian documentary made in 2013 that went on to win the world over as “an engaging, funny, heart-breaking story of the power of what one ordinary man can achieve.” It was called Menstrual Man. In 2014, the protagonist of this film was featured in the TIME magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People in the World. And in 2016, the Government of India honored him with the Padma Shri.
Yet Arunachalam Muruganantham, the iconic Padman, is not someone whose success can be measured by awards and accolades. The path that he traveled saw his neighbors labeling him as a pervert, his wife leaving, his friends growing distant and his mother sobbing inconsolably, that her son had gone mad. His crime was that he kept trying to create sanitary napkins for women that would be as good as the branded ones, yet so cheap that the poor could afford to buy one.
This unusual turn of events started after his marriage to Shanthi in 1998. Then he learnt for the first time the predicament of millions of Indian women during their menstrual days. One day, he found his wife opting for dirty rags, to save the money that a pack of sanitary napkins cost. He bought a pack to gift his wife, and later himself got engrossed in observing one, wondering why something that mostly constituted of cotton would be so exorbitantly priced.
In a country where 300 million women cannot afford branded hygiene products and 1 in 5 girls stop going to school once menstruation starts, the taboo around the subject made the process even more difficult for a man. He made pads trying to make a replica of the ones sold in glossy packets, but could not find women to try them and give feedback. His wife got angry after sometime, sisters shied away, and female students that he approached in a medical college turned him down too. To use a napkin made by an unknown man and discuss further on it, is not something a common Indian girl is cut out for.
What’s worse, his already angry wife thought this to be his excuse to go running after college girls and sent him a notice for divorce. The village folk were no less creative. They doubted him to be an evil spirit who drank women’s blood after sunset, because there did not seem to be a possible explanation, why a man would be this obsessed about women’s menstruation!
It took him two years of trial and error to discover that cellulose from wood pulp made the branded napkins absorb well and retain their shapes. This led to another discovery, these pads were manufactured in big plants, costing as much as 3.5 crore INR, a reason why only big corporations could afford to produce them. He spent the next four and a half years in research till he built a machine that can be accomodated into a space of 3.5 metre X 3.5 metre and produce 2 napkins per minute. The innovation won the ‘Best Innovation for the Betterment of Society’ competition in IIT, Madras, leaving 942 contestants behind.
Once he got the product patented, Muruganantham turned down offers of all big corporations and started selling his invention to rural women across India. Jayashree Industries, his start up, has sold more than 1300 of these machines in 27 Indian states. Countries like Nigeria, Ethiopia, Uganda, Kenya, Nepal and Bangladesh are following on these footsteps.
Presently, only 7% Indian women use sanitary napkins. The rest get by with clothes and even leaves, sand, ashes, dust and dirt, making infections common and the risk of associated cancer more frequent. Muruganantham is resolute that in his lifetime he will make India a 100% sanitary napkin using country. And on doing this, he plans to generate 1 million employments in the rural parts of India.
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