Facebook Twitter Flipboard Email Enlarge this image Anand Brian Anand Brian Editor’s note: This story was originally published in February and has been republished with updates. Today, everyone respects Arunachalam Muruganantham, 52, a social entrepreneur who lives in the city of Coimbatore in South India. But there was a time, he says, when his neighbors were convinced he had lost his mind. Some even believed that he was a vampire. “It all started because I wanted to create a good sanitary napkin for my wife,” he laughs. That was back in 1998, when Muruganantham married Shanthi Natrajan. He saw that she would use torn rags to absorb the blood during the onset of her menstrual cycle. He was shocked to find out how common this practice was. Other women in the villages around Coimbatore would use whatever was at their disposal — wrapping small mounds of ash or sand in cloth to use as absorbents. Later that year, he began to experiment. He was intent on creating a cheaper sanitary napkin. “In the ’90s, the napkins were available in Indian stores and supermarkets, but because of high production costs, they were out of reach of many,” he says. And they weren’t always available in rural areas. At first, he thought he’d solved the problem when he wrapped tufts of cotton in gauze. Yet he soon realized that his handmade creation was flimsy and would disintegrate in minutes. It wasn’t easy to use either, his wife told him. But he wasn’t… [Read full story]
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