Can a piece of cloth (or lack of it) make you so uncomfortable that you give up your cosy corporate job and make it the mission of your life? Sometimes that, one idea, one dream and one couple can make a difference in the lives of millions. Obviously not but curiously yes, provided you decide to act upon your inner callings just as Meenakshi and Anshu Gupta did
With only 67 personal clothes undergoing transformation in 1998, they began highlighting cloth as a metaphor of some ignored but basic needs of people Twenty years later, they continue doing it with the same passion but what has really changed is the scale, spread and depth of their operations. Thanks to the trans-formative work done by Goonj-the non-profit organization they founded in 1999 today, they touch the lives of millions living in extreme poverty, mostly in rural India.
Every year they deal with more than 3000 tons of underutilized clothes and other household material collected from hundreds of affluent urban families to build a unique cashless, economic bridge between the urban and rural communities across 23 states of India. But that’s not all. What really amazes you is the way the Goonj team repairs and reinvents not just used clothes but many other surplus household items like school bags, utensils, toys, pencils, shoes, electronic gadgets, books, unused stationery and medicines and whatever reusable or new you have.
Indeed, it’s a wonder to watch how, without wasting anything, their fully- trained team, mostly women, use the usable for different kits and turn oversized cotton clothes into cloth-sanitary pads; old t-shirts into women’s undergarments and discarded jeans into school bags at their Sarita Vihar headquarters in Delhi and other centers. They also take out zips and buttons to stitch them into fashion accessories and utilise even the last inch of cloth to make baby beds and warm cribs. For, many newborns die every year when intense cold waves hit the northern states!
However, if you think these need-based but thoughtfully-packed Goonj kits are given free of cost, to the villagers, you’re wrong because charity is against their philosophy. Instead, they suggest village communities identify local problems, work on them collectively and then “earn” them as a reward for doing things like repairing a road/bridge, cleaning/digging a well/lake, etc. Participants not only do something for themselves but also for the community and thus receive a family kit of basic needs material. This way Goonj ensures that the dignity and self-respect of the recipients remain intact.
In fact, over the last 20 years, Goonj has also turned massive disaster wastage into resource for development work right from the Gujarat earthquake to the Tsunami of 2004, Bihar floods (2008), Uttarakhand floods (2013), Jammu and Kashmir floods (2014), Andhra Pradesh and Kerala floods (2018), to name only the major ones.
No wonder, the way they’ve quietly turned Goonj into a pan-India movement, connecting urban and rural India, through simple sharing of surplus material has won them rich global applause. NASA’s Game Changing Innovation Recognition (2012), World Bank’s Global Development Marketplace Award, GDN’s Most Innovative Development Project Award and Change-Makers Award, are only a few.
Anshu has also been conferred the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award (2015), known as Asia’s Nobel Prize, for his creative vision in changing the culture of giving in India. He is also an Ashoka and Schwab Fellow.
Though media has covered Goonj activities frequently, it has surprisingly missed out the beautiful love story of its founders. Not many, for instance, know that Meenakshi and Anshu were once classmates and complete opposites when they first met at Delhi’s Indian Institute of Mass Communications (IIMC).
From mere classmates, they became desk-mates, then job-mates and finally soulmates. And their daughter Urvi, who calls Goonj her sibling-as both were born in the same year, is now doing her graduation from a prestigious college of Delhi University. We recently met this amazing Change Maker Jodi at their artistically-built bungalow in Faridabad.
Meenakshi and Anshu Gupta, India’s one-and-the-only ‘Clothing Couple’ (as they’re popularly known) share many little-known milestones of their amazing journey, with Corporate Citizen. Excerpts:
"Every year, Meenakshi and Anshu Gupta deal with more than 3000 tons of underutilized clothes and other household material collected from hundreds of affluent urban families to build a unique cashless, economic bridge between the urban and rural communities across 23 states of India. But that’s not all. What really amazes you is the way the Goonj team repairs and reinvents not just used clothes but many other surplus household items like school bags, utensils, toys, pencils, shoes, electronic gadgets, books, unused stationery and medicines and whatever reusable or new you have"
Anshu: Most people study in IIMC for only a year and then join some job but I didn’t feel satisfied after completing a year-long Journalism course. So, I applied again, this time, for IIMC’s Advertising and PR course. Luckily, I got in too. I met Meenakshi (or Mini as I affectionately call her) during this course which changed the course of my destiny, though after lots of twists and turns.
Meenakshi: There wasn’t anything phenomenal when we met first. We all knew he had done Journalism before and so he was much more familiar with the place and the people. While we were all wide-eyed and confused at IIMC, he looked confident. He used to be full of masti and always cheerful. Incidentally, my schooling and graduation were both in Delhi - I had done B. Com (Hons) from Delhi University. My father was the Head of Communications at the National Institute of Health and Family Welfare and knew of this course. He guided me. It was tough, as only 30 kids were selected, but by chance, I was one amongst them.
Anshu: I used to do human interest stories. One such was on Habib bhai, the professional ‘unclaimed body’ collector, which affected me rather deeply. It happened when I accidentally saw his manual rickshaw in Old Delhi markets with “Dilli Police ka laash dhoney wala” (a person who picks up unclaimed, abandoned dead bodies for the local police) scribbled on it. I found that he was paid Rs.20 and two meters of white cloth by the Delhi Police for every dead body. I then spent a week with Habib Bhai—from early morning till late in the night…and saw a large number of unclaimed bodies of all kinds. It was an experience which brought me face to face with the harsh reality of life. I also began understanding a bit about slums, poverty and homelessness.
Anshu: Yes, it did, because on a wintry morning when I accompanied Habib bhai to collect an unclaimed body near Dilli Gate area in Old Delhi, I found that the man was wearing nothing but a thin shirt, and had clearly died of cold. This made me wonder why nobody bothers about such deaths. Even though every politician talks about roti kapda makaan, why do they not make clothing a basic human right? Habib bhai told me how his work goes up during the winters when he picks up around 12 such bodies in a range of 5 km every 24 hours. I couldn’t believe it, though I had myself spent a week with Habib bhai and his family!
I did many other similar human interest stories too, including the one on Purani Dilli’s Kabootar Baazi and Red Fort’s Chor Bazaar. They ignited in me a thought process on human sufferings. I became more empathetic, thoughtful and started changing from inside.
Anshu: The idea of running an organization like this was never there in my mind but sub-consciously I was getting deeply disturbed by the state of clothing. Also, somewhere deep, I realized that I wouldn’t be a good fit in the corporate world. In July 1995, right before our wedding, I left Powergrid and joined Escorts. Consequently, we couldn’t take any long leave for our marriage. My office was in Ballabhgarh (Haryana), 45 km from Safdurjung Enclave. Since there was no metro in those days, I used to travel on a scooter facing extremely risky roads and long working hours. Though Mini continued at Powergrid for some more time, she also got frustrated and left it later. She then joined a very nice PR agency, Corporate Voice, in Lajpat Nagar and got extremely busy. So, post-marriage, we never really spent a lot of time together on a holiday. But then, in 1996, Mini got a very good break with the BBC News.
Meenakshi: We’ve been each other’s biggest support systems and yes, the eight years I spent as the Publicist of BBC at their South-Asia Bureau in Delhi were most rewarding as I got to work with some amazing journalists. However, with Anshu’s first-hand experiences with people like Habib and many others, one thing that was disturbing us time and again was the state of homeless people, struggling for the basics on the roads of Delhi especially in winters.
"It’s unfortunate that for convenience sake, most people want to do their CSR activities in the 50-60 km range from their office. I often tell them that problems exist not just in Gurugram but elsewhere too, though it’s changing and many are now willing to focus on far-off villages too. Although the pace of this change is very slow, the good part is that many are getting into long-term relationships with us"
- Anshu
Anshu: In 1998, I finally decided to quit my corporate job and not apply again. We also took out everything we had not used in the last three years and there were 67 units of clothing, shoes, etc. So, this became day one of Goonj, though we never thought of formalizing it. But after Goonj got registered as per process in February 1999, we thought of making it big.
Anshu: We took up a stall at Dilli Haat the popular open air, craft bazar opposite INA Market—so that people at least get to know about it. We started with the idea of making bamboo clocks to attract people and initially made 22 pieces. We thought it’ll take us seven to eight days to sell them, but all our clocks got sold off in just two days and even our leaflets asking people to contribute their surplus clothes etc., got quickly exhausted. So, each day, when we’d return from Dilli Haat, we’d get eight to ten messages on our answering machine, promising clothes and other material while appreciating our thoughts. That’s how this journey began. We’d come home, make clocks and key rings at night and sell them off during the daytime.
Anshu: It’s not about asking as I strongly believed that doing good is a collective social responsibility. Also, we came from very proud middle class families where asking for money wasn’t an easy thing. But still, people contributed a lot in the past 20 years. We’ve also made sure that the myths and halos around giving material go away and educated people like us understand that when we give our old stuff, we don’t donate, we actually discard. So, we explained to them, saying, you want to ‘give’ something and be thankful to those who, by using your used material, give it value and a new life.
Meenakshi: Not many, but we’re trying to make ‘giving’ a more mindful act which respects the dignity of the receiver. But moving from ‘charity to dignity’ has been tough. Charity strips people of their self-respect and this is where our concept of “Cloth for Work” came up. It motivates people to solve their local problems, from water to sanitation and then get material as a reward, not as charity for the work.
Meenakshi: Changing mindsets is a slow process but the important thing is that people in the cities are also going through lifestyle changes. With better incomes, they’re buying more and more but with shrinking living spaces, they’re also realizing the need to take out the surplus, unused material from their homes. Goonj looks like a trustworthy channel to them.
Anshu: They come automatically, largely by word of mouth, as they also look for trustworthy organizations.
Anshu: Just as there are good and bad people, so are corporate's. Goonj is surviving and growing because of good people and good organizations and there is no dearth of them. Of course, there have been many bad experiences too, especially during disasters when for some institutions, it’s just a numbers game to get rid of their next-to-expiry, unwanted and substandard material to increase numbers. Some corporate's also treat us as if we’re simply postmen carrying their things to the rural communities. However, we’re really touched by the support from some organizations and middle and lower middle class people during the recent Kerala tragedy who sent us exactly the things what we needed.
Meenakshi: Neither of us was trained in the development sector when we began. We approached things like a common person would, and did what we felt was best. Our mantra was: What doesn’t feel right for us must not be right for anybody else as well. The biggest lesson came from the people we worked with. We strongly believe that if you really want to solve some of the big issues of the country, talk to the ordinary people, they not only have deep insights but also suggest innovative solutions. We’ve also realized that people in metro cities really need the kind of mechanism Goonj provides and that the word of mouth communication is the fastest and the strongest.
Anshu: No. I left my job in 1998, though Mini continued. The initial years were very tough because this, for sure, is a hardcore logistical job. In fact, there was a time when Mini was the only earning member of the family. Sometimes, it was also about selling some of our household stuff to take care of Goonj’s expenses (both smile).
Anshu: It wasn’t about convincing anybody. It was always about sharing an idea. We started off with Dilli Haat, then word of mouth communication followed. Next came a shop we opened in Sarita Vihar which wasn’t financially viable but provided us visibility and allowed people to join us. While it remained loss-making, we continued. Then the 1999 Odisha cyclone happened and after that Gujarat earthquake (2001) and then the riots. Many volunteers joined us at the time. That’s when we first organised collection camps.
Meenakshi: It’s the volunteers who really took up this idea in a big way by organising camps and talking to people. They suggested we reach out to funding agencies, but agency responses disappointed us because clothing didn’t fall among their ‘parameters’. It was a non-issue for them. Clothing wasn’t part of any district, state, national or international agency’s agenda. That’s when we realized that the first step for us was to bring clothing into the mainstream developmental agenda.
"We have different relationships as husband-wife and as co-workers at Goonj. One of his strengths is the openness to view things differently and that has pervaded in everything Goonj does, right from the beginning. As for a clash of opinion, I believe in the couplet, ‘Ek ne kahi duje ne maani, nanak kahe dono gyaani’"
- Meenakshi
Anshu: Meeting many classes of poor people on Old Delhi streets, I realized that most village people migrate to big cities not by choice but by compulsion. So, we were very clear we had to work at the very root of this problem. The idea was that if these issues are solved at the village level, many other things would get solved by themselves. That’s why we turned towards villages.
Anshu: Initially, it was not Cloth-for-Work. We used to call it Vastra Daan, which later became Vastra Sammaan. In the early years, on a visit to Bihar, we found people touching our feet. We were surprised. On a little prodding, we realized that the material we distributed just before Chhath Puja, their biggest annual festival, had saved many families from taking loans from local zamindars and thus saved them from exploitation. We also realized that the biggest asset of the village people is their self-respect and dignity and that’s where the idea of Cloth-for-Work emerged.
Anshu: We were the first to start an open conversation on this issue and the need for cloth as sanitary napkins for women who don’t have enough to cover even their body. That insight had also come up during such conversations- a woman shared how her sister died because she used a blouse as a sanitary pad that had a metallic hook which led to tetanus and her eventual death. Until then, we hadn’t realized how huge a problem it was, particularly for rural women!
Anshu: We don’t believe in branding. We don’t make a noise, but try to work peacefully. We believe in creating sparks, not causing fires. We want our work to speak for us and not vice-versa. In the recent Kerala tragedy, the overwhelming response we received reaffirmed our faith in what we are doing.
Anshu: I lose my patience when somebody tries to market poverty. Why should they keep showing distressed children to collect money? Why are we not able to show happy faces? The girl in the Goonj banner has a torn sweater but a smiling face. The financially poor have accepted their fate - how long will we play the publicity game through their lives? I’m pained when people use demeaning words like donor or beneficiary during disasters. We don’t call people disaster-victims. We don’t take selfies with the so-called victims or wear t-shirts with huge logos. God doesn’t differentiate between good and bad, so when a natural calamity strikes, it affects everyone equally. Why don’t people think this can also happen to them? Why do we keep thinking of the affected individuals as victims? How do some get the audacity to send their torn and used undergarments for relief purposes?
Anshu: It has been a tough journey because we’ve always kept very low budget operations. Recently, during the Kerala tragedy also, when we set up the Kochi office, we simply put a mat and used biscuit-cartons for tables. Even though we had funds, we didn’t buy a single table or chair. In the last 20 years, we’ve not bought a single A-4 sheet. Right now our yearly budget is about 25-cores - spent primarily on space, transportation and people, as this is a hardcore logistical work which is only going up. We get it through multiple sources from small individual contributions to CSR budgets to money earned through awards and by selling our beautifully recycled products.
Anshu: It is difficult and we’re always on our toes because the scales are still very, very frugal. But we’re not dependent on any one agency. Gradually, even the corporate sector has started realizing that we don’t work just on cloth but also on large-scale sanitation, water, health, and such other issues.
Anshu: It’s unfortunate that for convenience sake, most people want to do their CSR activities in the 50-60 km range from their office. I often tell them that problems exist not just in Gurugram but elsewhere too, though it’s changing and many are now willing to focus on far-off villages too. Although the pace of this change is very slow, the good part is that many are getting into long-term relationships with us. We’ve recently signed up some such commitments.
Meenakshi: In 90% of cases, people have come to us because our work speaks for us. This year, for the first time, we mailed some letters to people and that too because we realized that our positioning was going wrong. Most people still think that we just collect and distribute clothes. That’s only partially correct. Clothes were certainly the starting point but today we’ve gone much deeper into village life and try to solve many other issues as well.
Anshu: Not much. But yes, it was a big thing for thousands of people who work with us as volunteers. Even in my Magsaysay award speech, I have said that we’re giving you copyright to copy our ideas. We don’t want to remain the only organization doing this; we want our idea to be replicated. We could’ve been 2000 people but our idea is not to grow big in size but act as a catalyst to sprout many such organizations. We want people to understand our holistic picture and not just the clothing initiatives. Until they understand our ethos and ideas, the work is only half done.
Anshu: It can, but so far it’s not something that we’ve incorporated much into our operations.
Anshu: I liked her simplicity. I was a so-called small town guy and was told hundreds of things about big-town people. But she was different and on top of it all, I really loved her ponytail hairstyle…imagine in those days, I had some real fascination over ponytails. We were a gang of four-two girls and two boys, all day scholars, but Mini was very particular about getting home on time. Though I never said it, I started liking her. I always wanted to do something big but wasn’t sure what it would be. I was fond of theater, photography and at one stage wanted to be a radio-jockey and always dreams of roaming around in an open-jeep with two cameras and a small family (smiles).
Meenakshi: I liked his confidence as he seemed to know what he wanted. Moreover, he had independent thinking. I still remember when the deadly earthquake hit Uttarkashi in 1991, claiming hundreds of lives and wreaking much destruction, how he quickly went there for a few days. When he came back, the whole class assembled around Anshu, enraptured by his stories from ground zero and the pictures he shot. It was fun to see him doing all this with so much passion because most of us from urban backgrounds had never seen such a disaster or even villages in this way.
Meenakshi: We have different relationships as husband-wife and as co-workers at Goonj. One of his strengths is the openness to view things differently and that has pervaded in everything Goonj does right from the beginning. As for a clash of opinion, I believe in the couplet, ‘Ek ne kahi duje ne maani, nanak kahe dono gyaani’. So that’s my mantra for personal life, there’s no superior or inferior. We give that much space to each other.
Anshu: We discuss and debate but we also enjoy the process as it helps us find a refined version. For me and Goonj, Mini has been our backbone, the silent one, who left a very promising career to take over hundreds of responsibilities from work to home. She has put much more on stake than me.
Anshu: I’m too deep into my work to have any hobbies. But the purpose of my life is not Goonj, it’s only a means to a destination and this is known to my team.
Meenakshi: Urvi is in the second year of college. We were very concerned that she should have a normal upbringing. She grew up with Goonj and thus has had varied experiences from visiting villages to visiting the US which gave her an excellent worldview. She’s quite mature and calm. She adjusts and makes friends easily - especially when we visit rural areas. Also, I’ve tried to maintain a balance so that we may all go on eating out or watching movies together.
Meenakshi: I consider myself a medium. My motto is to be true to my work with utmost sincerity and honesty and with the wisdom and understanding that I have.
Anshu: In this country, we don’t need thinkers anymore; we need doers, we need action-oriented people. Even if we can do 10% of what Gandhiji, Swami Vivekanand and Bhagat Singh had taught us, a lot will change. And, what I always tell everybody is: ‘Lage Raho’.
By Pradeep Mathur
