PADMAN — India’s Superhero Menstruation man wears his fame lightly Period. End of Sentence
SEASON 2 | from ZERO to HERO | Stories of Inspiring Indians
Purists accused him of hitting below the belt (pun unintended). His entering an exclusive female domain was sacrilege, said the traditionalists. Yet, Arunachalam Muruganantham went ahead with his unique experiment and the resultant project scripted a whole new chapter in the lives of many rural, uneducated and underprivileged women.
It is hard to believe that even today many places in India are fraught with preposterous taboos. Especially they become all the more exaggerated when it comes to women who are yet to reach the level of awareness. The Monthly cycle is a natural phenomenon women are ordained to go through, yet there are a number of superstitions surrounding menstrual hygiene in many places. If tribal girls in the Nilgiris believe that their eyes will be taken away if they use sanitary napkins, a girl had to use it for two months to tell her friends “Look, my eyes are still intact.” Fighting this kind of superstitions is the biggest challenge he faced in the incredible journey he negotiated with his very woman-partial invention.
It was his marriage to Shanthi that made him realise some home truths, and dominating them was the hardship faced by women during their menstrual cycle. Much to his chagrin, he learnt that only one in 10 use sanitary napkins in villages and some of them use old rags, sand, leaves and even ash while they were having their monthly periods. Girls used to shut themselves at home due to this discomfort they had to go through every month.
But who is this brother who actually made the entire world sit up and notice what everyone thought was just another period in the curriculum of life??
Meet Pad Man Arunachalam.
Wikipedia starts his introduction as ….Arunachalam Muruganantham (Padman) is a social entrepreneur from Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu, India. He is the inventor of a low-cost sanitary pad-making machine and is credited for innovating grassroots mechanisms for generating awareness about traditional unhygienic practices around menstruation in rural India. His mini-machines, which can manufacture sanitary pads for less than a third of the cost of commercial pads, have been installed in 23 of the 29 states of India in rural areas. He is currently planning to expand the production of these machines to 106 nations. The movie Period. End of Sentence. won the Academy Award for Best Documentary (Short Subject) for the year 2018. The 2018 Hindi film Pad Man was made on his invention, where he was portrayed by Akshay Kumar. In 2014, he was included in Time magazine’s list of 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2016, he was awarded the Padma Shri by the Government of India.[3]
Muruganantham was born in 1961 and grew up in poverty after his father died in a road accident. His mother worked as a farm labourer to help in his studies. However, at the age of 14, he dropped out of school. He supplied food to factory workers and took up various jobs as a machine tool operator, yam-selling agent, farm labourer, and welder, to support his family.
In 1998, he married Shanthi. Shortly thereafter, Muruganantham discovered his wife collecting filthy rags and newspapers to use during her menstrual cycle, as sanitary napkins made by multinational corporations were expensive. Troubled by this, he started designing experimental pads. Initially, he made pads out of cotton, but these were rejected by his wife and sisters. Eventually, they stopped co-operating with him and refused to be the test subjects for his innovations. He realised that the raw materials cost ₹10 (13¢ US), but the end product sold for 40 times that price. He looked for female volunteers who could test his inventions, but most were too shy to discuss their menstrual issues with him. He started testing it on himself, using a bladder with animal blood, but became the subject of ridicule when the “sanitary pad” was discovered in his village. As menstruation was a taboo subject in India, it left him ostracized by his community and family. He distributed his products free to girls in a local medical college, hoping that they would give him feedback.
It took him two years to discover that the commercial pads used cellulose fibers derived from pine bark wood pulp. The fibres helped the pads absorb while retaining shape. Imported machines that made the pads cost ₹35 million (US$440,000). He devised a low-cost machine that could be operated with minimal training. He sourced the processed pine wood pulp from a supplier in Mumbai, and the machines would grind, de-fibrate, press and sterilize the pads under ultraviolet light before packaging them for sale. The machine costs ₹65,000 (US$810).
In 2006, he visited IIT Madras to show his idea and receive suggestions. They registered his invention for the National Innovation Foundation’s Grassroots Technological Innovations Award; it 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. Despite offers from several corporate entities to commercialize his venture, he has refused, 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. The machine creates jobs and income for many women, and affordable pads enable many more women to earn their livelihood during menstruation. In addition to his own outreach, Muruganantham’s work has also inspired many other entrepreneurs to enter this area, including some who propose to use waste banana fibre or bamboo for the purpose.
Muruganantham has become well known as a social entrepreneur. He has given lectures at many institutions including IIT Bombay, IIT Madras, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani — Goa Campus and Harvard University. He has also given a TED talk.
Muruganantham’s story was the subject of a prize-winning documentary by Amit Virmani, Menstrual Man, and the film Phullu (2017) directed by Abhishek Saxena. Director R. Balki cast Indian actor Akshay Kumar as Laxmikant Chauhan in a film based on Muruganantham’s life, titled Pad Man.
A boy born in a poor weaver’s family who lost his father at an early age is a great prospect for gloom and the losers gallery. But our hero Arunachalam crafted his own story. He fought all conditions including heckles from society and people who thought he was a mad man to emerge as a super hero for the rural masses. From Mad Man came his sobriquet PAD MAN,
Padmans First experiment is Awe Inspiring
He crafted a sanitary pad out of cotton and went around seeking help from women to use it and give him feedback. While waiting for a month for his wife to use it and when he was faced with a no from his sister and medicos whom he approached for the experiment, he tried it on himself, creating a ‘uterus’ for himself from a football bladder. Filling it with goat’s blood to which he added an additive to prevent it from clotting, he would go around whole day hiding it under his clothes. Thus he checked the absorption rate of the sanitary napkins made by him. It took him two years and three months to discover what sanitary pads are made of. Almost after four-and-a-half years, he successfully created a low-cost machine for the production of sanitary pads.
What a true life story!!! What a man!!!! This Zero to Hero story has inspired may NGO’s like Rohit Memorial Trust, to support girls and women from the rural populace and also in several tribal hamlets.
