The brave heart who fought for toilets

Priyanka Bharti ran away right after her marriage when she was asked to defecate in the open. 

Newly-wed young Priyanka Bharti brought about a social revolution by standing up to her husband’s family when they asked her to defecate in the open. And with this, she ensured effective sanitation facilities for women in her village and all nearby villages. 

On hearing just one sentence, Priyanka Bharti decided to change not just her life but that of several of her female counterparts. “No toilet at home, so what? We all defecate in the open and so must you,” was said to Priyanka by her mother-in-law the very first day that she reached her in-laws’ house after marriage in Uttar Pradesh’s Maharajganj district in April 2012.

She left her in-laws’ house two days later with a pledge that unless a toilet is constructed she wouldn’t return – something never dared by a woman before.

“It was not possible for me to defecate in the open. So, I decided to run away,” she says.

Ever since she ran away on 13th April, 2012, demanding that her in-laws build a toilet to get their daughter-in-law back, Priyanka’s life changed as she attracted a lot of national and international attention..

As the news of a newly-wed bride running away from her home for the lack of a toilet spread across villages, Sulabh International got involved. The officials at Sulabh heard about her protest and adopted her cause as a way to promote better public health through proper sanitation facilities.

They helped with the construction of a proper toilet in her husband Amarjeet’s house and also felicitated her with an award of Rs. 2 lakhs

Spotlessly clean and decorated with plastic flowers and balloons for its opening ceremony, Priyanka Bharti’s toilet was seen as a gleaming symbol of the empowerment of Indian women.
This, however, was not the end but the turning point of Priyanka’s life goals.

Every day, once Priyanka finishes her household chores, she holds discussions with village women of all ages to spread awareness about the significance of hygiene. As a brand ambassador of Sulabh, she travels across villages such as Chapia and Piparwa, often accompanied by Amarjeet.

India’s Rural Development Minister, Jairam Ramesh said recently that India “should be ashamed” that 60 to 70 percent of women are forced to defecate in the open and he vowed further funding to tackle the problem.

All in all, it’s wonderful to know that women no longer succumb to the irrational rules laid by the society and find strength to empower one another.

Man who can make silk without killing the silk worms

Take a bow to Kusuma Rajaiah: A Resident of Hyderabad who produces silk without killing the silk worms.

Have you ever considered the fact that thousands of silkworms are killed in order to make a small piece of fabric? Kusuma Rajaiah started this ahimsa way of producing silk when he was approached by Janaki Venkataraman, wife of former President R. Venkataraman if he had any saree which had notresulted in the killing of any silkworms. This led Kusuma to investigate whether silk could be produced without deliberate killing of the worms.

How did he achieve this?:

Silk comes from the cocoons of the silk worm. In the silk industry, cocoons are killed by steaming or dropping them into boiling water when they are ten days old, before they metamorphose into a moth.

The silk is believed to be the finest at this stage. This is preferred because when the cocoons open naturally at one end, to release the moth, the continuity of the fibre is lost. But maybe not, thought Kusuma.

He purchases cocoons from mulberry farms in Chittoor district. The yellow coloured cocoons are reared in large cane baskets at his residence in Hyderabad. The moths emerge after 8-10 days, piercing the cocoon at one end. “The adult moths have a short life span of four days. During this time they mate and die naturally,” Kusuma explains.

The pierced cocoons are spun into yarn. This is then woven into fabrics. Weavers of Nalgonda and Ananthpur district of Andhra Pradesh produce dhotis while fabrics, including saris, are woven by the weavers of Karimnagar district. “All my products are done on handlooms and benefits several weaver families,” says Kusuma.

Inspired by Mahatma Gandhi, he calls this silk ahimsa. While ahimsa silk may lack the shine of regular silk, it is comfortable to wear. It’s also wrinkle-free and has a better fall.

Athough Kusuma is not noticed by many, he is making a huge difference in saving the population of silkworms.

The Coolest innovator ever

A Time Bomb, An Automatic Food Maker, A Robot – Here’s Why Abhishek Is The Coolest Innovator We Know! 

At 12, using a torch, an alarm clock and an explosive firecracker, Abhishek Bhagat was ready with his first innovation – a time bomb, which blasted as soon as the clock struck four. 
“It was just an experiment and I wanted to check how it works. My family thought that I was in wrong company that they sent me to a hostel,” he remembers.

But this did not bring his curiosity down. Interested in experimenting and innovation, Bhagat always learnt his lessons the practical way. Bhagat made a path-breaking innovation which gave him recognition internationally and brought him to the notice of Dr. Kalam.

At 13, he innovated an amazing food making machine that makes dishes which taste as good as his mother’s recipes.
When his mother fell ill, he had to cook for the family and he realized how tedious and time consuming it was. To make cooking simpler without changing the taste, he came up with an interesting idea.
“I first got the idea of creating a tea-making machine, as I would make tea for my parents everyday. I wondered why we had to wait for the water to heat and then the tea leaves to boil, etc. Wouldn’t it be great if a timer could take care of everything?” he asks.

Not knowing how to give shape to his idea, he saw Dr. A P J Abdul Kalam on television and found that he encouraged children to be innovative.He wrote a letter to Dr. Kalam asking for suggestions and to his surprise, he got a response from Dr. Kalam within a month. He suggested that Bhagat send his ideas to the National Innovation Foundation
He first made a cardboard prototype and gave it to a nearby shop to create a replica of the model from steel. When he was ready with his final model, he sent it to NIF. It was widely appreciated and was even sent for the national level competition, where he grabbed first prize.

With further research, modifications and NIF’s help, he finalized the idea and named it Robocook, an electrically operated automatic food making machine, where ingredients are loaded in boxes and the cooking is completed according to the recipe fed in the system.

The young innovator is full of ideas, and in the future, he wants to create robots which can perform all tasks that humans can.
“I just advise all young students to always understand things and ask your teachers where and how can we use the lessons or syllabus in real life, or what is the use of what we are learning. Education is not only about reading and passing exams. To use what you have learnt to do something new is real study,” he says.

Thus, India can now foresee a greater future in the field of innovation owing to budding innovators like Abhishek.

Afrian Grandmothers are studying Solar Engineering in India

Meet Loda Okasia: The African Grandmother Studying Solar Engineering In India

Loda Okasia, the 58 year old African from Northern Uganda had rarely been out of her village but was sent on the trip of a lifetime, all the way to India, to spend six months learning to become a solar engineer.

“We were very proud,” Okasia says. “We learned about solar power and it is now working everywhere here.”

Okasia is one of a growing number of women from across Asia, Africa and Latin America who have participated in Barefoot College’s international solar program. The women travel to the small town of Tilonia in the desert state of Rajasthan to learn how to be solar engineers, and how to train others to do the same.

Illiterate engineers

Bunker Roy founded Barefoot College in Ajmer, in 1972. He says that there are only two conditions for acceptance to the program: that the women are older than 45, and that they are illiterate.

“Once we train an illiterate woman, they never forget what they’ve learned,” says Roy.
A grant from the Indian government pays for the women to come to India for six months and learn how to build, repair and maintain solar lighting systems. Their communities purchase the basic equipment at a subsidized rate from an Indian solar power company.

Men are “quite untrainable”

Roy says Barefoot College’s program makes communities more independent. It also elevates the roles of older women. Choosing students between the ages of 45 and 55 – grandmothers in name or in fact – is key to making the program effective.

“We’ve found men are restless and ambitious. They want a certificate, and as soon as they get it, they move to cities looking for work. Grandmothers are not interested in a paper to hang on their walls. They stay in their communities. Also, they have the patience to be great trainers.”

Saving money with solar

Loda Okasia says that since she has returned to her village, she has been maintaining the 200 solar lanterns that were distributed to her neighbors.

“With it, we don’t have to buy paraffin [for oil lamps],” says Okasia. “Nobody works here. Buying paraffin is not easy. We are happy with solar.”

Truly sustainable development

According to Roy, “the future is south-south cooperation. We can exchange practical knowledge and skills at the community level. We can learn things from Africa, and Africa can learn from us. This is community-to-community knowledge sharing.”

As for Loda Okasia, she says that her only complaint about her training in India was the spicy food. Otherwise, she is happy with her new skills. Now, she says, she wants to build a solar workshop so that she can assemble and repair more solar tools for her village.

The Milk Man of India

A Tribute To The Man Who Revolutionized The Milk Industry In India, But Never Received Bharat Ratna

Late Dr. Verghese Kurien the man who came to Anand almost 60 years ago after completing his graduation in the US, had decided to leave soon in search of better opportunities. But something made him stay back forever – the “billion-litre” idea – to transform the life of millions of milk producers in the country — and he stayed on to become the “Milkman of India”, the Father of the White Revolution.

Kurien was only 28 when he came to Anand in Gujarat in 1949, and was soon working relentlessly to help a budding co-operative grow. For him the dairy farmers were the rightful owners of the milk business. By 1955, the co-operative owned Asia’s largest dairy and was producing more than 20,000 litres of milk a day. This is when AMUL, Asia’s top milk-distributing brand today, was born. Soon Anand had been transformed from a small village in the country to the Milk Capital of India.

Kurien replicated the Anand model throughout India as Operation Flood, making India the world’s largest producer of milk. Not only did Gujarat’s farmers benefit immensely from Kurien’s work, the other milk producing states such as Bihar, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh also started flourishing under Kurien’s guidance. Today over 10 million farmers across the country at 200 dairies produce over 20 million litres of milk a day. It was due to success of the Operation Flood model that India achieved the laurel of becoming the largest milk producing nation globally.

Kurien was an excellent marketing person. He marketed the “Anand Success Story” as a management model for rural institutional development. He set up a milk intervention programme, a national milk grid, under the Operation Flood programme. Through the milk grid he ensured that surpluses from higher milk produce areas reached deficit areas. He not only established around 30 institutions of excellence including AMUL, GCMMF, IRMA, NDDB but also created several grassroots institutions especially to provide skill-oriented training and encourage socio-economic development of the rural masses.
Winner of Padma Vibhushan (India’s second-highest civilian honour), the World Food Prize and the Magsaysay Award for community leadership, Dr. Kurien played an instrumental role in the marketing of award-winning director Shyam Benegal’s greatest work ‘Manthan’ featuring Kurien himself on the silver screen for his path-breaking initiatives in the milk co-operative movement.

Hardly would one find a young graduate with a lucrative career ahead settling to improve the lives of the poor, but Dr. Kurien was an extraordinary man who cherished a dream for the dairy industry of India.

Pay Rs.1000/- fine to spit in Mumbai

Kudos to Mumbai! Spitting on streets could now cost a person an arm and a leg as the state cabinet on Tuesday approved a newfangled law that employs both monetary punishment and compulsory community service.

When a citizen spits on the road for the first time, he would have to pay Rs 1,000 as fine and spend a day to do social work at a public hospital or a government office. A second-time offender will have to pay Rs 3,000 plus three-day community service, and frequent offenders Rs 5,000 plus five-day service respectively. The amount collected in fines will be used only for healthcare services.

This we think is a clever move by the government in preserving the public hygiene.

Could there be another innovative way to do away with this?

Youngest Indian Sailor at the Asian Games

Meet Chithresh Tatha: The Youngest Sailor To Represent India At The Asian Games.

The young lad from Chennai is just 12 and is the youngest sailor from India to participate in the recently commenced Asian Games at Incheon, South Korea. He first developed an interest in the sport when he saw his sister Meghna sailing in the Laser Radial category and thought of giving the sport a try himself. Sincethen, he has never looked back and even won the gold medal in the India International Regatta (Under-12) in 2013.

A passion for sailing has taken this grade 7 student from Chennai’s Bhavan’s Rajaji Vidyashram school to countries like the UK, Malaysia, Turkey, Ireland, France, Bahrain, the Netherlands and Malta.

“I began sailing in 2009 and it came naturally to me. I love being on the water. It gives me great joy,” he told the New Indian Express.

The young genius makes sure that he practices six hours every day and hasn’t even been to school for six months now.

“I’m making up for the missed hours at school by studying at home. Thankfully my teachers have been very supportive and that’s helped me focus on sailing completely”, Chitresh told The Times of India.

Tatha is a national champion in the ‘Optimist’ category, which is a small, single-handed sailing dinghy used by children up to the age of 15. Being one of the most popular categories, there are over 1,50,000 boats registered in this class.

Thus, Tatha proves that age is just a number and one can never be too young to find their passion. We wish good luck to this young sailor and hope to see him succeed in his all his endeavours,