A. Muruganantham

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A. Muruganantham ( Arunachalam Muruganantham ; * 1962 in Tamil Nadu , India ) is an Indian inventor and entrepreneur . Muruganantham invented an inexpensive, small machine that enables women in developing countries or underdeveloped rural areas to make sanitary napkins for a fraction of the market cost. Muruganantham has managed to bring a taboo subject into the public in India and at the same time to fundamentally improve the psychosocial and hygienic conditions for women in his home country during menstruation .

The US news magazine “ TIME ” therefore listed him in 2014 among the “100 Most Influential People” in the “ Pioneers ” group .

life and work

Muruganantham grew up in great poverty. His father was a weaver and died when Muruganatham was 14 years old. He then had to drop out of school to earn money. His mother worked in agriculture for starvation wages. While in school, Muruganantham had won an award for designing a chicken incubator .

invention

Shortly after Muruganantham got married in 1998, he noticed his wife was secretly collecting scraps of dirty cloth. When he asked about it, he learned from her that she used them to collect blood during her menstruation. When asked why she chose this unsanitary and degrading method, she replied that the pads that are commercially available and manufactured by multinational corporations are too expensive and that she would not have enough money left for food. According to a study by the international market research institute ACNielsen in 2010, only 12% of Indian women use sanitary towels during menstruation. The other 88% cannot afford pads or tampons because they are too expensive. Instead, they use scraps of cloth, ashes, newspaper, dried leaves and the like. Because of these unsanitary measures, 70% of women in India suffer from genital infections, which increases the risk of cancer.

Shocked by these conditions, Muruganantham himself began experimentally making sanitary towels to do his wife a favor. But he quickly found that it wasn't as easy as he had thought. When he came home from work as a welder in the evening , he would spend hours trying out new materials and new manufacturing processes, but his wife and sister eventually refused to test his developments for him any further. In the beginning he made the pads out of cotton . He later bought a commercial product to investigate and found that the cost of the raw material was about 10 paise (one tenth of an Indian rupee ) but the end product sold for 40 times that. Since he came from a weaver family, he was convinced that he could produce the product more cheaply himself. Muruganantham then began to test different materials as well as to construct a simple machine to give women the opportunity to make the sanitary towels quickly, cheaply and in large numbers.

Public exclusion and stigma

His preoccupation with the taboo subject of "menstruation" gradually led to an estrangement between him and his wife and eventually his mother, who did not understand his interest, which she believed had become an obsession . Both eventually parted ways with him. Muruganantham was now looking for other test subjects in order to be able to continue testing the sanitary napkins he made. Among other things, he addressed medical students who, out of shame, responded very hesitantly to his request. Because he provided them with the sanitary towels he had made himself free of charge, but made it a condition that he received them back from the wearer after use. Finally, he began his products in the self-experiment to test by wearing them and a menstrual thereby simulated that he made himself a container which he carried around. It contained animal blood, which in turn ran under pressure through a tube into the self-made bandage. He had treated the blood from a butcher and beforehand in such a way that it did not turn . In this way Muruganantham tested the absorbency of the material, but also the wearing properties.

His intense preoccupation with the subject gradually became known in the neighborhood. She either did not understand his interest or misunderstood it as a pathological tendency or perversion and made fun of him.

"Women fled at the sight of me; people used to call me mentally and wondered if I had weird diseases […] I was even suspected of being possessed by a bad spirit. No one used to come near me during full moons because of that. I had to meet what friends I had in secret. "

- The Guardian: India's women given low-cost route to sanitary protection

“Women ran away when they saw me. People declared me crazy and wondered if I had any strange diseases […] I was even suspected of being possessed by an evil spirit. That's why nobody came near me when the moon was full. I had to secretly meet the friends I had. "

Despite these setbacks, Muruganantham did not allow himself to be discouraged and instead pursued his goal. After another two years, he finally found out what the pads were made of. He then refined his production techniques. In the meantime, he had learned that a commercial machine used by the industry to make sanitary napkins cost £ 300,000  . He decided to develop a simpler and, above all, cheaper one himself. It took him four more years to do this. His machine grinds, presses and sterilizes the bandage material using UV light before the finished product is packaged. Two years later, in 2006, he won an innovation award from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras for his machine . He also won an innovation award from the President of India.

The machine

Muruganantham has now developed two different types of production machines. All are easy to manufacture and cost effective. Sanitary towels can be produced in just four work steps. One - simpler - version can produce 1000 sanitary napkins a day. With the second, pneumatically operated version, 3000 pieces can be produced daily. The selling price is a fraction of the industrially produced goods.

Positive side effects: jobs for women and increased awareness

A machine costs around £ 2,600 and is sold direct to rural women. Financing is guaranteed through women's self-help groups , NGOs and special bank loans. The purchase price includes a three-hour training period for the machine operator, who can then employ three more women in production and distribution. The machine also provides jobs and income for underprivileged women in rural areas. There are currently 1,300 machines in operation in over 800 small businesses in 27 Indian states and 17 other states. The pads produced in this way are sold from woman to woman and are often taken over by nurses or midwives . Muruganantham's goal is to sell 100,000 machines worldwide, creating jobs and income for a million women. Despite business offers, Muruganantham refuses to sell the patent .

breakthrough

After Muruganantham's work gained more and more attention worldwide and he received internationally renowned prizes for his commitment, his reputation in his home country also rose. Today he lives again with his wife and daughter and his mother has found him again.

For several years he has also been giving lectures about his work around the world. So at various universities in India, but also at Harvard University in the USA. In 2012 he gave a TED talk .

documentary

In 2013 the filmmakers Amit Virmani and Seah Kui Luan shot the documentary “ Menstrual Man ” about Muruganantham, his invention and the slow change in awareness of this subject in India that it caused. The film premiered that same year at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival in Durham , North Carolina . At the Asia Pacific Screen Awards 2013 the film was nominated as "Best Feature Documentary".

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary
  2. ↑ Arunachalam Muruganantham: Breaking Taboos, Pioneering Innovation For Women's Health
  3. ↑ a b c India’s women given low-cost route to sanitary protection
  4. ↑ Ruchira Gupta: Arunachalam Muruganantham
  5. ↑ Welcome to New Inventions - Jayaashree Industries ( Memento of August 18, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
  6. ↑ a b c Mini sanitary napkin making machine
  7. ↑ To Indian Inventor Disrupts The Period Industry
  8. ↑ Times of India : 70% can't afford sanitary napkins, reveals study
  9. ^ A man in a woman's world
  10. ↑ a b c Arunachalam Muruganantham, Inventor / Founder ( Memento from July 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  11. ↑ Arunachalam Muruganantham: How I started a sanitary napkin revolution!
  12. ^ Website of the film
  13. ^ Film excerpt from the ARD media library. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on September 5, 2015 ; accessed on February 12, 2019 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.ardmediathek.de

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Muruganantham, A.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Muruganantham, Arunachalam (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Indian inventor and entrepreneur
DATE OF BIRTH 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Tamil Nadu , India