Birds and animals, share with man an equal anxiety for food and shelter. They hunt and gather and build nests or lairs. But it is clothes that give us our distinct human identity. We titter at naked people. We may not on a street, be able to distinguish hungry or homeless ones, but an unclothed one? Why, that'd unnerve us.

Everyone somehow scrounges a garment or at least a rag to claim human-hood. Since naked people are a rare sight, problems of clothing are not readily apparent to us.

They were not apparent to Anshu Gupta either- not for a long time. But when the point went home eight years ago, it did with a vehemence that he has not quite recovered from yet. He is a man obsessed with the issue of clothing and our ways with it, our ignorance of it. Today he has a large and growing movement. You can participate in it with little cost of time and money and make a huge difference, in giving fellow Indians some dignity.

Fighting it out, finding a place:

Influences on him came over several years. First was the stock he comes from. Anshu was born in Meerut in 1970, to Shiva Das Gupta, a civilian employee of the armed forces and his wife who was the daughter of a post office employee. They had three children and money was always short. But idealism wasn't lacking. Anshu's grandfather had a small business, which he gave up to follow Gandhi.

Neither did they lack grit. At work, Shiva Das had been framed and sent home, pending an enquiry. It took him an year but he fought back to clear his name and get his job back. "But that one year was enough to get into a debt trap that took us 15 years to come out of", says Anshu. "Most people don't have any idea how families without steady incomes, cope to keep their body and dignity together." He saw his father come through, walking upright. Anshu was ten.

In another seven years, he was himself to add to his father's woes. Multiple fractures sustained in a road accident kept him in a hospital for an year. The army's medical aid did not extend to its civilian employees so the family had more bills to pay. Father had no resentment of the fresh debts piling up; he was melancholy because doctors feared Anshu may not walk again.

"I will be a writer," he reassured his father. His first piece in Hindi was published in Sapthahik Hindustan, even as he lay recuperating. Impressed, father made several sorties to the Indian Institute of Mass Communications [IIMC] to get his son admitted. [By the way, Anshu has since walked tens of kilometres in the hills].

Dots to connect:

At IIMC Anshu was instantly in luck. His classmate was a vivacious girl, Meenakshi Trakroo. He wooed her, she responded and they married later. But that did not cause either of them to shut the door on the world and indulge themselves. They were both seeking a cause worth living for.

Anshu was freelancing for magazines even as a student. A series of experiences that didn't quite connect then, eventually led him and Meenakshi to commit themselves to their current mission.

When earthquakes shook Uttarkashi in 1991, Anshu went over with his camera. "Relief work was in full swing but it was not very sensitively done," he says. "The hill people are poor but they are proud. They were aghast at bundles of clothes dumped from moving trucks, literally on their heads. They withdrew and chose to wrap themselves in potato sacking cloth." Charity without dignity is an insult.

In Delhi's streets he once found a young man lie dead. There was an empty bottle of liquor and a full plate of uneaten food. "He died drinking to keep warm", whispered people who stood around. He had food to eat but not clothes to shield against the cold. Anshu met many young men who skipped job interviews because they did not have presentable clothes.

Habib: A trigger that started Goonj:

In 1991, Anshu, student and a freelancing photo-journalist stopped and stared at the tricycle with this sign: "Dilli pulis ka laash dhone wala". Translated it meant, "Disposer of dead bodies for the Delhi Police". The place was the crowded entrance to the Lok Nayak Jaya Prakash Narayan [LNJP] Hospital in Old Delhi. Of all the trades plied on India's humming streets, this had to be the most unusual. He found Habib and his blind wife Amana Begum standing by. The young journalist dug into the story.

It turned out that there were numerous bodies littering the city's streets, that no one claimed. There was no foul play and so there wasn't any need for the police to investigate. Everyone around concurred the person died of entirely 'natural' causes. There was nothing to do but to dispose off the bodies. That's where Habib came in.

He was given Rs.20 and three yards of cloth for each body and away he went carting it to the nearest crematorium. News of a 'find' came from a policeman or the bush telegraph. Habib and his wife were busy and made a living.

Young Anshu was intrigued and followed Habib's tricycle for months. He was struck by the ways of an impersonal, fast-moving city. He wrote a feature on Habib just as several other itinerant journalists did. Was there nothing more to it? Anshu discussed this with Meenakshi, his class-mate. They couldn't shake off Habib's words: "The body count goes up in winter. I can barely cope".

Habib is 75 now and still plies his trade with his wife Amana and his hearse outside the LNJP. He was the chief guest at Goonj's seventh anniversary day. After all he had been a trigger that started Goonj.

Wonder if he has noticed a fall in the body count because of his friend, Anshu. That'd be good news and progress in sad India.

Habib, by now Anshu's friend [see box] concurred. "In winter time I am over-worked", said Habib. "There are too many bodies to pick up". Meenakshi and Anshu heard a doctor say of cervical cancer in poor women: "Most of the time, the cause is lack of hygiene during the menstrual periods. Women live with vaginal horrors. I have found a live centipede lodged there". All because menstruation is a woman only phenomenon and so treated as a subject too dirty to talk about. The poor cannot afford sanitary napkins. Early death is an easier, practical solution.

These experiences made them sombre, but they had not found a focus yet. They went away to pursue their careers and start a family. Anshu's passion for photography and writing kept him vigilant for human interest stories, even as he held a full time job as a corporate communicator.

Echo off a cloth heap:

Come every disaster, peoples' first instinct is to bundle old clothes to give away. It's a quick and easy way of feeling good. The first time Meenakshi and Anshu put their pile together, they stopped in their tracks. Then they sat down and pondered the message behind the pile: "Here we are, a young family of two adults, new home-makers for just three years, not wealthy by any means and we have 67 pieces of good, usable garments we don't want any more. Yet, but for the disaster we wouldn't be giving them away."

The year was 1998. Goonj [meaning "Echo"] was born that moment. They resolved, that it'd collect old clothes round the year, sort them and target them precisely to the needy, who must receive them with their dignity intact. Meenakshi had a job with the BBC that could support them. Anshu quit his at Escorts to build Goonj.

From the beginning the centrality was receivers' dignity and not givers' pride. Goonj does not accept torn or under- garments. They must be usable pieces given with care and deliberation. These are inspected individually, sorted, folded and packed according to indents received from service agencies in rural India though whom Goonj distributes clothes.

Goonj encourages people to audit their wardrobes regularly and not wait for disasters, as the need for clothes is steady. It organises neighbourhood meets to which people bring their old clothes. At these day long get-togethers, a sense of community builds up and enthusiasm rises. "It's the sort of exercise that gives, at the end of a single day, a sense of fulfillment", says Anshu. Invariably someone puts up a hand offering to organise a meet in another's neighbourhood, a friend's or a relation's. So the movement has spread, first in Delhi and now to other cities. Delhi alone has over 100 hard core volunteers passionate about the movement. Notable among them has been Ajay Sharma, a long time friend and supporter and Yasmeen and Ruchika, two young graduates whom Anshu calls, his extra hands.

Care is in the detail:

Till three years ago, the collection used to arrive in Gupta's small house, where volunteers and paid staff processed the clothes. [Goonj has a separate office and work place now]. Intimate wear is rejected. Torn clothes are set aside for conversion into usable products. Good but dirty clothes are removed for washing. Then, requisitions from organisations are taken up. These contain requirement by gender, age and size. These are selected and packed in used sacks. Sacks are numbered and the numbers recorded in a database. And finally they are on their way to close to 200 destinations around the country.

No cloth is ever wasted. They are converted to school bags, tote bags, quilts, and mats. A great quantity is converted into narrow tapes to be used as drawstrings for petticoats. The ultimate, unusable waste is chopped up and stuffed into pillows and quilts.

Perhaps, the most poignant of all products that Goonj makes are sanitary napkins of its own design. Each set has three parts: a waist-string, a small absorbant pad and a palm wide strip to hold the padding in place while its ends are tucked under the waist-string. Ten sets are packed with care into a drawstring pouch for a women to receive without embarrassment. [It'd be nice if readers of GoodNewsIndia came forward to sponsor this revolutionary product at the rate of Rs.20 per bag, with a minimum of say, 100 bags. You could be saving women from dying of a lethal ailment called neglect.]

For all the care that Goonj lavishes on its gifts of love, quantities are nothing to be sneered at: they currently send ten tonnes of material per month. But the need for this service is huge in India: "All the quantity we send is sufficient for just two or three good sized villages", says Anshu and adds: "A disaster like the tsunami brings out an overkill and then collective philanthropy drops to zero". [See box]

Cleaning up after the tsunami:

The tsunami of 2004 left behind not only changed lives but also the fall-out of misplaced, insensitive giving. People from all over sent trainloads of clothes,a quantity far in excess of the need - much of them no one could use in south India [woolen balaclavas, for example].

Governments get blamed for many things but in this case there was no one else ready to clean-up. So district collectorates in Tamil Nadu gathered all the remaining mountains of clothes and shifted them to warehouses. And there they lay, with no one knowing what to do with them.\

To Anshu, all this was painful irony: here he was with a fistful of wish lists from villages that he was unable to meet and in government godowns lay orphaned clothes. When he heard that a collector was selling them off in lots to pay for relief works, Anshu was enraged. He pointed out that merchants were buying good clothes for Rs.2 that they could resell for Rs.40. Besides how can the government make money out of aid material. The special tsunami collector Mr C V Shankar, in Chennai saw the point and asked what was the solution? Anshu said, "Hand them over to Goonj and we will clear the pile and account for every single piece". Then someone said what came to Tamil Nadu cannot go to other parts of India. Anshu retorted by holding up heavy woolens and asked where they might have come from.

After several rounds with sympathetic Mr Shankar, he got the go-ahead in June, 2005. The state has also given a part of a warehouse ib Chennai for Goonj to set up sorting and clearing operations. Anshu started with just Rs.10,000 from a well-wisher. He recruited local girls and trained them in the tested Goonj workflow. The collector was impressed and soon the word went around. In January, 2006 Deutsche Bank heard of it and a senior manager flew in from Singapore for a presentation by Anshu. Instantly Rs.20 lakhs were sanctioned.

With that Goonj has bought 16 sewing machines to begin a conversions section for its product line and of course, their favourite, the sanitary napkins. Today the place is abuzz with 40 women at gainful employment. Goonj took over a 2 million pieces pile. The pile is diminishing at the rate of 4,000 pieces per day and reaching needy people all over the country. [During the last earthquake, a consignment went to Pakistan as well.]

This has become a model of innovative, creative public service.

Cloth as currency:

Goonj costs Rs.18,00,000 a year to run. Though it may seem high, it is about what a nominally affluent home spends on itself in an year. Around Rs.4,00,000 comes from spontaneous sources. The rest has to be worked for. He is trying to charge a flat Rs.1 per garment. That will bring in an additional Rs.6,00,000 a year. He wants to scale the operations to 3 million pieces, charge Rs.1 per piece and float Goonj off its subsidised moorings.

In many instances, the monetisation of clothes doesn't benefit Goonj but creates public good. In a remarkable innovation, Goonj demands voluntary labour in return for good clothes. It is a hearteningly successful experiment. In Moregaon, Assam, 120 villagers laboured a full day to repair an approach road and received clothes in payment. In Vidharbha, Maharashtra villagers built fences around their school and temple. In Kuthambakkam, Tamil Nadu, a water body was cleared of weeds. Again in Tamil Nadu, quarry workers in Kundrathur have agreed to clear drains in their settlement in return for clothes. In Sunderbans, Bengal clothes were given in return for total cleaning and sprucing of village environs. 50 villages in Maharashtra have queued up for the clothes for work programme.

Meenakshi, the helmsman:

The contentment shows on Anshu's face. He has a paid Ashoka Fellowship. That will expire in 2007. Meenakshi has just quit her job and works full time for Goonj. They can sense they have reached the tipping point. They may soon succeed in reaching their 3 million target.

Goonj's sturdy relationship with rural NGOs has spawned other innovations. Among them, the new 'School to School' programme. In this, city children send their good and used water bottles, school bags and other materials of use to school going children in rural India. Goonj is also passionate about reuse of discarded photocopy pages. These invariably have a blank side which Goonj converts into usable stationery.

All this should be enough for any man to puff up with self-congratulations. Anshu has no such luxuries to indulge in. Meenakshi steers him clear of that course. She won't let anyone in Goonj forget, that in charity work, the profile of the initiator has to be self-effacing. "She is very good at ensuring that," says Anshu with a huge smile.

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GOONJ
J-93 Sarita Vihar
New Delhi- 110076
Phones:[011]26972351; 0-98681-46978 [Mobile : Anshu]
email: ,
Website: http://www.goonj.info
...
Goonj has government authorisation to accept donations from overseas. Indian donors can claim tax break under Section 80G
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August, 2006