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| Interview - Magsaysay winner Anshu Gupta. Courtesy Goonj.org |
The just announced Magsaysay winner Anshu Gupta founded Goonj, an NGO, in 1999 to give aid to weaker communities. It works in 21 Indian states distributing over 1,000 tonnes of materials, from clothes to books, to the needy. It sources its supply from the rich and the middle-class families free of cost.
Goonj's work has been well-recognised. In 2012 NASA called it a "Game Changing Innovation" and in the same year, Forbes magazine recognised Anshu Gupta as an influential Indian rural entrepreneur.
Anshu Gupta had met with a nasty accident during his late teens and was taken to a government hospital in Dehradun. The doctor asked for bribe to treat his fractured leg. But Anshu Gupta's father, an honest government officer, refused to pay and the doctor did a bad job deliberately.
"As a result, even today, I can't stand for long periods without experiencing pain," Anshu Gupta told Business Standard. And each time it hurts, he says, he remembers his father's honesty.
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The second incident occurred when Anshu Gupta was an IIMC student. He had gone to old Delhi on a chilly December night with a professional 'unclaimed body collector'. They came across an unidentified man who had died of cold, wearing nothing but a thin cotton shirt. That is when Anshu Gupta realised that clothing was a basic human right