Gupta: He transformed culture of giving in India

From a distance, it was a stunning image to capture on camera: A man driving a rickshaw with his wife and little girl beside him on a road in New Delhi, India.

But up close, Anshu Gupta, a young freelance photographer, realized it was a trick of the eye.

The man on the photograph, Habib, was a “picker of abandoned dead bodies,” as explicitly stated in a written sign on the passenger cart.

But it was a revelation from the man’s daughter that shook Gupta: “When I feel cold, I hug the dead body and sleep. It does not trouble me, because it does not turn around.”

This was how an idea started with Gupta, now 44, one of the five individuals to receive the Ramon Magsaysay Award, the Asian equivalent of the Nobel Prize, on Aug. 31.

The other awardees this year are Kommaly Chanthavong, Laos; Ligaya Fernando-Amilbangsa, the Philippines; Kyaw Thu, Burma (Myanmar); and Sanjiv Chaturvedi, India.

Gupta was cited for transforming the culture of giving in India and bringing back the dignity of the poor by founding the nongovernment organization Goonj (Echo), which recycles used clothes and household goods into useful products for the poor.

His conversation with that girl in 1991 made Gupta realize a pressing problem in the poor communities in India.

“A man has basic needs: food, clothes and shelter. But among development issues ranging from domestic violence to global warming, clothing has been taken for granted,” the unassuming Gupta said in a recent interview with reporters at Ramon Magsaysay Center in Manila.

Tale from closet

Goonj started from Gupta’s own household in 1998 when he and his wife Meenakshi, who had previously worked for the British Broadcasting Corp., decided to take out their old and unworn clothes from the closet. The couple initially gathered 67 clothes to be distributed to the poor people in India.

From 1998 to 2003, Gupta and his wife have been running the organization from their own home without a clear source of funding.

Gupta said Goonj never had a fund-raising unit to oversee the finances of the organization.

“Not a single person has the responsibility to talk about funds,” he said.

Half of the funding for Goonj’s operational expenses comes from the common folk in India.

“Thousands and thousands contribute even without us asking for money,” he said.

Gupta’s mission was to grow not as an organization but as an idea, the main reason Goonj had stopped expanding after establishing 12 offices in 12 Indian states. At present, it is relying on its 300-member volunteer network.

“We want to grow as an idea so that people will replicate what we are doing,” Gupta said.

New meaning of giving

Gupta and his organization hope to change the meaning of giving.

“When people say ‘I want to donate clothes,’ that is a wrong statement, an overstatement. You don’t donate a T-shirt you had been using for six months and you wanted to get rid of and give to another. It was not actually donating but discarding,” said Gupta, who has finished a master’s degree in economics and taken degrees in journalism and mass communication.

The mindset has to change, he said. “It is very important for us to respect those people who use the second-hand materials,” he said.

For Gupta, the clothes donated by the organization are not just pieces of clothing.

In the far-flung villages of India, the rural folk would never beg, unlike in the cities.

Thus, Goonj made sure the recipients of the clothes would feel they have earned them.

Gupta conceptualized a “clothes-for-work” program, in which families eligible to receive clothes are those who had participated in community development projects.

“It’s not about the donor’s pride but the receiver’s dignity,” he said.

‘Festival’ time

He recounted one evening when he and his team were distributing blankets and clothes made of wool to homeless people in New Delhi, an activity that was not announced.

One old man who got clothing stopped Gupta’s car as the team was about to leave. He raised his hands, a gesture of respect, and said in Hindi: “Now it is Eid (festival) for me.”

Gupta noted that across the world, a festival meant a time to have a new pair of clothes.

“Even if they are financially poor, they have the same want,” he said.

Gupta noted that the inequality in India and elsewhere is even worsened by the mindset toward the poor.

“The problem of the world is that we want ourselves to live while we want others to merely survive. That is where the gap comes in,” he said.

“When we wish others to live in a dignified way, that’s the time when the change starts. Charity will go. The dignity will come,” Gupta said.

From 67 articles of clothing from Gupta’s closet, Goonj’s monthly disbursal has now grown to over 10,000 kilograms.

Gupta has also used the donated clothes which are already unwearable to provide clean cloth for the women’s sanitary pads in the villages.

In India, where millions are spent on reproductive health and mother care, it was common for village women to use dirty clothes as sanitary napkins, which becomes a cradle for many diseases.

Surprise call

Gupta said he, his wife and his daughter were emotional after receiving a phone call from the Philippines informing him that he will be conferred Asia’s premier prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

“It was a surprise. We didn’t expect it to happen and we didn’t think about those things,” he said.

He said the 16-year-old organization had kept itself away from the media but the news would often reach media organizations.

Even after he and his wife resigned from their full-time jobs to focus on running the organization, they never thought of it as a sacrifice, according to Gupta.

“We had a dream. We started chasing it and working on that,” he said.

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