Earlier today Akshay Kumar released the trailer of his upcoming film PadMan. The trailer has already garnered more than a million views on YouTube in just six hours and has been getting rave reviews from all across web. Akshay Kumar, in particular, is being praised for taking up such characters as well as films. In the film he is playing the role of a "superhero" called PadMan, who revolutionarised the concept of menstrual hygiene in rural India by creating a low-cost sanitary napkins machine.
This idea seems intriguing and unconventional for celluloid imagine if this happened in real life? Well it actually did... For those unaware, PadMan is based on the book called The Legend Of Lakshmi Prasad written by Twinkle Khanna, which was inspired from the life and antics of Arunachalam Muruganantham.
Born in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu, Arunachalam Muruganantham is the man who actually wore a sanitary pad to prove his point. A school dropout, Muruganatham had a simple dream of providing women across India, especially those from rural areas, a low cost sanitary pad. He is the inventor of a low cost sanitory pad maing machine. According to information available online,
In 1998, he got married to Shanthi. Shortly after, Murugananthan 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 realized that the raw materials cost 10 paise ($0.002), 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 is a taboosubject in India, it left him ostracized by his community and family. He distributed his products free to girls in a local medical college, provided they returned them to him after use. 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 INR 35 million. So, 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 before packaging them for sale. The machine costs INR 65,000.
In 2006, he visited IIT Madras, where they hailed and registered his invention for the National Innovation Foundation's Grassroots Technological Innovations Award, which he eventually won. His machines, through which he can manufacture less than one third of cost of pads manufactured by MNCs, is installed in 23 states in India and he is planning to expand it to 106 nations.
In 2014 he was named in 100 most influential people in the world and in 2016 he was awarded Padma Shri by GOI.
Before PadMan, an award winning documentary was made on his life by Amit Virmani called Menstrual Man.
Directed by R Balki, PadMan is slated for a January 26, 2017 release and also stars Sonam Kapoor and Radhika Apte in the lead role.
No comments:
Post a Comment