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I am prelecting on a subject which hardly capacitates as a subject...Development studies have somewhere around 100 -150 subjects but there is hardly any work done for one of the most intrinsic neccesity of life - Clothing.
It is ironical that we wait for a disaster to help the needy with clothes.Where the disaster hit person first looses his capacity to store. There is an incident which happened way back in the winters of 1991. There was this man called Habib bhai. He had a rickshaw and there was a pamphlet saying "Main dilli sarkar ka lash dhone wala hoon". Habib bhai along with his blind wife picked up unclaimed dead bodies of those unfortunate who came to the capital in search of a job and died out of the scantiness of clothes. Habib bhai drew some Rs 20 and a 2 metre cloth...He dumps the body at the creatorium and carries out the last rituals...He lamented that during winters his work gets so much that he can't handle the dead bodies...On an average around 7-8 deaths increase in winters in a range of 5kms due to lack of clothes.
The more shocking statement came from his 4 year old daughter that she sleeps with the dead when unable to bear the cold because the dead don't move and don't disturb...If this is the scenario of the capital where a girl has to sleep with the dead to keep herself warm what about the remote parts of the country? Studies have thrown light that in rural India people dig a pit 8 inches to a feet long as per the size of the hut and the whole family goes in the pit to protect themselves from the severe cold.
It is a known fact that every woman in the world needs a piece of cloth which is a sanitary pad...It is a taboo to speak about the subject specialy among women but in a country where there ain't enough to cover urself, where a blouse or peticoat is a dream how does the woman fulfills this basic need? Studies show women use the dirtiest piece of cloth because it is a synonm of dirt...And in a family where the cycles are different it is shared between the women of the family...Even more horrendous is the face that they sometimes clean it and an't dry it in the open for obvious reasons and store it in a dingy earthern pot and is shared between neighbours too ...Inpoli the child bearing age females have to get their uterus removed because once they catch an infection the uterus has to be removed to reduce chances of cervix cancer...Girls have to stop going school as they hit puberty because it is hard to cope up with mensural problems and it is believed they are grown up...
We boast of being a super power, a polio less nation but this is the harsh reality of the modern India.
I am talking about the man who raised the echo, I am talking of Mr Anshu Gupta - the founder of Goonj, one of India’s leading social enterprises channelising under-utilised materials from urban homes like clothes, stationery, utensils etc., and turning them into valuable resources for the rural poor. Today Goonj sends out more than 70 tonnes of material every month to parts of 21 states of India. Surely with the labour of this man his echo has forced the government of India to implement a huge annual subsidised scheme of distributing non-biodegradable, disposable sanitary napkins which has the potential of becoming another fiscal and environmental disaster.
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