My plea is that don't wait for a girl to become a woman to empower them. Empower a girl's life by giving sanitary pads to them. With pads, we give them wings.
Arunachalam Muruganantham
You can send women to the Moon or Mars later. First, provide sanitary pads to them.
Social entrepreneurship is like a butterfly, sucking honey from a flower, but the flower won't die. They're helping the flower to make pollination.
Even if I can take sanitary napkins to 10% of the poor women in India, it will be big achievement.
Why buy sanitary napkins from multinationals when we can make them at home and generate employment?
There are two kinds of students: those who study and work to survive, while others who want to be achievers.
My nature is such that even if I failed 9,999 times, I'll attempt for the 10,000th time again.
'Padman' was about my early life and struggles, including my wife calling me a psycho and leaving me.
The strong creation created by God in the world is not the lion, not the elephant, not the tiger - the girl.
The most difficult thing is changing people's mindset.
I didn't take the money route because I saw my parents struggle for survival.
Every father, brother, and husband should know about menstruation. It is not just about women; it is about men, too.
When I work in the remotest villages, it reminds me of who I am... India is not built on 14 metros and 100 cities. It's made up of 600,000 villages.
I converted a problem into an opportunity.
I never thought someone would make a film on my story.
The government should include menstrual hygiene in the curriculum.
My vision is to make India into a 100% sanitary-pad-using country. Menstruation is no more a taboo.
Luckily, I'm not educated. If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop.
I am becoming a solution provider. I'm very happy. I don't want to make this as a corporate entity. I want to make this as a local sanitary pad movement across the globe.
I always say, 'Be near science and technology, and you will never fail.'
My life is a brave one. I didn't put any restrictions.
Imagine: I got patent rights to the only machine in the world to make low-cost sanitary napkins - a hot-cake product. Anyone with an MBA would immediately accumulate the maximum money. But I did not want to. Why? Because from childhood, I know no human being died because of poverty - everything happens because of ignorance.
The taboo regarding menstruation exists across the world, even among the educated.
A male can be a boy, a man, a love/husband, a father, a grandfather, a great-grandfather, but they don't have any knowledge what's happening inside a woman's body. That's what I had learnt in my early married life.
It took me eight years of trial and error to design the machines that would make low-cost pads: just Rs 2 each, compared to those made by the MNCs that are priced anywhere above Rs 6 to Rs 100.
I have not hung a single award on my walls, including the Padma Shri.
When I tell a foreign audience that 90 per cent of Indian women have no access to sanitary napkin, there is a visible disbelief. But there is hardly a ripple when I say the same thing to an Indian crowd.
I am the son of a hand-loom weaver. I have a connection with yarn. I thought, 'Why not try to make an affordable sanitary pad for my wife?'
A lot of people making a lot of money, billion, billions of dollars accumulating. Why are they coming for, finally, for philanthropy? Why the need for accumulating money, then doing philanthropy? What if one decided to start philanthropy from the day one?
If you chase a girl, the girl won't like you. Do your job simply, the girl will chase you.
I had been getting queries from regional filmmakers to do a movie based on my work. But I did not want my work and mission - to create awareness on menstrual hygiene - to be restricted to only a part of the country. In fact, I wanted to do the movie in Hollywood.
There were offers from a few Bollywood filmmakers, but I was sceptical as to whether those films will do justice to my vision or even my life. I was also apprehensive because what if I sign an agreement and give the rights to some filmmaker, and he shelves the project?
I have been working in north Indian villages, so I know the truth. Compared to the south Indian states, north India is less developed, and there's little awareness on menstrual hygiene.
I suffered a lot when I tried to make sanitary napkins and promote the idea. My family - including my mother and wife - deserted me. Villagers even tied me to a tree and beat me. But after seeing me successful now, they come and say that they all knew that I would become famous one day.
My wife gone, my mum gone, ostracised by my village. I was left all alone in life.
I have accumulated no money but I accumulate a lot of happiness. If you get rich, you have an apartment with an extra bedroom - and then you die.
My wife was gone, all other girls failed to cooperate, so I decided to wear a pouch of animal blood myself and test out my pads by wearing them myself. The discomfort I felt for those five days cannot be explained in words; I bow to every woman on earth for going through this every month.
The idea came from my wife, since in our village, women cannot afford to buy sanitary pads. When I asked my wife, she told me we would have to cut down half of our milk budget to buy sanitary pads. Moreover, while raw materials for sanitary pads cost 10 paise, the end product was sold for 40 times that price. So, I decided to create it on my own.
I don't have any plans to make money for myself. All I wish to do is empower rural women in our country.
Most of the students whom I have lectured were inquisitive to learn and contribute towards my vision. So, the youth who want to achieve in life can do a lot for society.
To help my mother, I started working as a workshop helper. There I learned welding and other tools.
I got married at 24. It was an arranged marriage.
Being the son of a handloom weaver, I have knowledge of cotton and some other material.
What kept me going was my desire to provide a hygiene product for my wife.
To break the age-old taboos and to see girls and women use pads was a difficult task.
I'm ecstatic to be known as pad man, as it makes a difference to women's lives.
I may fail today, but if I have another idea tomorrow, maybe it will work.
My argument is that there is already an automated machine to make pads. What I did - I reverse-engineered it to 'simple.' Anyone who wants to compete will have to come out with a simpler machine.
I know that if I had got educated, I might have ended up as a call-center employee.
Nobody in the society will talk about menstruation... it's a taboo in my country. That's why I'm branded by society as a psycho.
