We all have heard the saying, ‘Be the change you wish to see in the world.’ For some, changing the world entails helping the needy through charity or donation. While others may want to associate with an NGO or start their own. Irrespective of what your inclination is, a real change in society can only be brought when you are truly passionate about something. True harbingers of change put the needs of others first and constantly work towards their betterment.
Ramon Magsaysay award-winner Anshu Gupta is one such individual who has been working tirelessly to uplift the marginalised. A former journalist, Gupta, who is popularly known as the ‘clothing man’ of India, has been addressing the neglected issues of the financially poor for over two decades with an emphasis on clothing as a sustainable development resource for the underprivileged.
His initiative, Goonj, founded in 1998, has been involved in various rural development issues and have made an impact in areas of education, disaster relief and rehabilitation, sanitation, menstrual health, and more. One of the most significant aspects of Goonj has been recycling urban discard, which is donated from the cities to India’s remote villages.
Gupta believes in solving issues together with the local communities, “instead of a top-down approach, where people like us go as contractors and start doing the work.” He adds, “It is more important that we can take care of some basic issues which need to be solved. Those issues need to be told to us by the communities instead of us deciding on them.”
In an exclusive conversation with Soulveda, Gupta sheds light on his journey so far, and the challenges he faced in helping the financially poor live a dignified life.
Goonj was founded to use urban discard as a tool to eliminate poverty. What was your inspiration behind this initiative?
Clothing has always been grossly ignored as a development issue. The initiative started through my personal experiences on the road during my journalism days, looking at people and seeing how winters were harsh for migrants and the homeless.
The initiative has spent over two decades working for the betterment of rural India. How has the journey been?
For me, Indian villages and village communities have been the biggest universities. Between what I learned during the initial years of my career and education and what I learned in the last 20-23 years, the second journey is more enriching and real. I will not say that everything I read was wrong, but practically it is very different. This also has been the journey of exploring a lot of things, including our own potential. I didn’t know this is what I can do or want to do. We were able to experiment a lot and see the country and the world in a better and deeper way.
Eliminating poverty in a country like India is not easy. What challenges did you face?
One of the constant challenges has been (dealing with) the mindset of people, especially the urban population. People don’t understand that a lot of passionate people have left their cushy lives to get into this (social development sector), not to make money but to do something good and meaningful. In the last few years or decades, a large number of people coming from the best institutions have left their careers to enter the social development sector to try and make a difference. It’s painful to hear the useless words that some insensitive and inexperienced people say about the sector.
You turn discarded material into useful resources for the financially poor. Can you tell us how this works?
Society has different economic levels and needs. We try to use a single lens to solve a lot of problems. In a country like India, which is so diverse culturally and geographically, there is no uniform solution to the issues. Instead of imposing agendas, can we listen to the people and understand what they need?
The model for the ‘Cloth for Work’ (now known as ‘Dignity for Work’) initiative is that a village community will decide what they need (roads, water bodies, Anganwadi, waterbody) and then they work on that. They receive the material from the city, which is curated in a detailed manner. We saw a clear-cut opportunity in the tonnes of material lying underutilised in the cities such as utensils, furniture, pipe fitting, footwear, and apparel. There is a huge resource locked in the boxes and wardrobes of people. We go through a rigorous process to match the needs of people with the available resources.
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