The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

I have read a lot on the subject of how civil rights and the rule of law allowed the emergence of the Industrial Revolution, and this story reminds of that earlier epoch. As late as the 1670s, England was still burning witches (male and female) at the stake, to punish them for their witchcraft. But then Newton publishes Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica in 1687, the Glorious Revolution of 1688 brings in a new regime, the English Bill of Rights of 1689 ensures everyone a trial if they are accused, everyone has civil rights, and suddenly, among the legal and intellectual elites, it becomes widely understood that witchcraft does not actually exist, everything can be explained by science, and people doing weird stuff need to have their civil rights protected. And by the early 1700s men like Jethro Tull and Charles Townsend kick off the Agricultural Revolution, doing weird stuff like feeding turnips to cows and collecting all the manure -- spooky weird stuff that might have gotten them accused of witchcraft just 30 years earlier.

And this story reminds of that earlier epoch. When you bring in real innovation (innovation that touches upon people's profoundest taboo's and fears) you either have civil rights, or you end up dead. And it does say something hopeful about India that this man knew his basic civil rights were going to protect him from accusations of witchcraft. Though, of course, this part suggests that India could still improve its protections quite a bit:

"Worse was to come. The villagers became convinced he was possessed by evil spirits, and were about to chain him upside down to a tree to be "healed" by the local soothsayer. He only narrowly avoided this treatment by agreeing to leave the village. It was a terrible price to pay. "My wife gone, my mum gone, ostracised by my village" he says. "I was left all alone in life.""

I am not Indian, but from a European country, and I had lots of things in common with this person when I created my start up.

When you want to change the world, nobody understands you.

Then suddenly things start working, and everybody "just knew" what you were doing was important.

They say that you identify pioneers by the arrows in their back.

Wouldn't because they are in Old Testament? Like the famous http://www.kingjamesbibleonline.org/Exodus-22-18/ which was also "not" observed by Christians:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_Early_Moder...

This is something that makes me both proud and sad about my home country India. We are still struggling with some of the basic problems that the developed world probably solved 100 years back. It makes me even more sad that just 60 years back India was hardly behind any other developed country.

Arunchalam's example is also a classic case of how Indian government has destroyed India's entrepreneurial zeal. When Arun introduced his cheap sanitary pad making machine, Indian government woke up and see an opportunity to gain votes of poor and goodwill of large companies.

Indian government came up with a scheme where poor women will get a "fixed" quota per month of sanitary pads paid for by tax payers.

--- Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MHFW) is set to embark upon an ambitious programme, reports The Hindu on 21st February 2010, to reach about 200 million women with 100 sanitary pads per person per annum with a budget of some INR 20 billion in next 3 to 6 months.

-- [Source: One of the email threads I was exchanging on this matter with a friend in government]

This is another Indian government scam where big companies like Johnson and Johnson etc. will provide these pads at taxpayers cost to the poor women while politicians will take their cut. Going by past experience even the pads wont reach the women.

Those who might be aware of India's economic history, it is full of such scams. Indian government often ran government sponsored health campaigns claiming things like

- "Wash your hands with soap after and before having food and going to toilet else it will will cause diseases."

- "Use iodized salt in food else your children will be born retarded".

- "Use toothbrush and toothpaste"

The reality is, even in rural areas the level of hygiene is way better. People used handmade soaps and herbal alternatives for soap. (Even I used them in my childhood). During my childhood oral hygiene involved brushing teeth with 5 different types of leaves, gargling with hot water mixed with a mixture of 15 different kind of powders which were comprised of different kind of tree skins, herbs and roots. My father still knows the formula and I used it successfully when I developed a gum related infection.

And you know what? Indians used plenty of sea salt in their food. We ate salted fish, Salted Pickles and what not.

Today it so happens that all these small scale industries are already dead. Not because they failed to innovate or compete on price. (In reality some companies like Vico succeeded with these traditional products) They failed because government actively tried to kill them in the name of public welfare.

Today I am buying a Colegate toothpaste which claims to contain "sea salt". The TV ad of this toothpaste shows a grandpa showing his grandson that his teeth are stronger at 80 purely because he used sea salt to brush his teeth in past. There are other companies out there which are selling toothpastes claiming to contain the exact same herbs that we used in past (Miswaak, Babool etc.)

When I visit Target and Wallmart I often see shelves full of crudely packaged soaps titled "Handmade Soap" selling at 3x the price of normal soap.

I feel sad for Arunachalam and many other people I know who are mad just like him because rest of us Indian citizens have failed to make a political choice which would have heralded these men as heroes.

Unsolicited Advice to Americans: I see American government taking same direction as that of Indian government in past and present. Pushing private interests of few in the name of poor. Buying votes by redistribution of wealth while wrecking incentives to be innovative. I might be wrong. But there is no cost to being cautious.

Not to offend anyone but Christianity is basically just a crazy death cult. I've been fighting the ignorance of this religion my entire life.