Dr. Arunachalam Muruganantham, social entrepreneur, innovator and the leader who brought to the public eye the issues related to unhygienic practices around menstruation in rural India was at the SPJIMR campus on Friday (Sep.16) as part of Heroes speak 2016.
Heroes Speak is a series of events under which social innovators and grassroots leaders are invited by the Development of Corporate Citizenship (DOCC) to interact with participants of various management programmes at SPJIMR.
Dr. Muruganantham has come to be called the "menstrual man" of India, for introducing and popularizing low cost sanitary pads. 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. He is currently planning to expand the production of these machines to 106 nations. In 2014, TIME magazine placed him in its list of 100 Most Influential People in the World. In 2016, he was awarded Padma Shri by Government of India
Just before the event commenced, our Dean Dr. Ranjan Banerjee happened to ask him, “How do you stay so grounded amidst the recognition?” to which Dr. Muruganantham replied, “All this recognition is not real, the contribution is!”
In the event, he said, "What do you need to create a new thing? You need a problem. So look for a problem and work to solve it. It's as simple as that. Your design or innovation is a solution to the problem". The model he used was 'D-tailing', i.e. going to the root of the problem. He emphasized and concluded by saying: "Being small, you can do big things."
