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10
MAGIS
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MAY 2014
their take on
growth routes
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spotlight
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Gupta founded Goonj in 1998, an
organisation which recycles anything
that is discarded as an urban waste into
a resource for others in the rural and ca-
lamity-hit areas. An Ashoka Fellow and
Ashoka Global Ambassador, Gupta has
created a mass movement for recycling
and reusing tonnes of waste material by
channelising it from cities to villages, as
a resource for rural development.
What is your take on the notion
of sustainable development?
Development is the second stage. The first
stage that we are working for is survival.
It is the fight for mere survival, develop-
ment is the next stage. The society will
sustain only if it survives. If development is
the work of the government then sustain-
able development has to be a participatory
approach. It has to be a joint effort of the
middle class and the resources of the gov-
MGNREGA was an effort in that direction.
Maybe not officially but unofficially we
have tried to improve the existing govern-
ment structures – like teaching in exist-
ing schools, which is also a government
structure.
Challenges faced when you
started Goonj?
The biggest challenge we faced when we
started Goonj was the mindset of the urban
people. They saw the process as a donation
for charity; however, in reality what they
were doing was discarding their unused
clothes. A bigger plight of the situation
was they gave us extremely dirty clothes;
with some having blood stains on them.
Clothes that could not be used… This eats
up our resources. Logistics was another
concern for us. Especially after a disaster
we have a huge pile of clothes coming in,
thus making storage a problem. Then there
is the problem of behavioural issues and at
the forefront of it are our volunteers; this
has a direct impact on our initiative. Then
again it is an ongoing process. Every day
there is a new set of people, who have to be
educated about the initiative. Today there
are some who know Goonj and the work
we do but after three years there will be a
new set of people who would be unaware
about our work. So we have to introduce
them to the project.
Has Goonj influenced govern-
ment’s outlook towards
non-issues?
To an extent maybe it has influenced but
nothing substantial as yet. Then again if the
mainline issues of education, water, food
are in a dire state how do we expect
them to take care of the non-issues. Stream-
lining the mainline issues of education,
water, food has been such a task for the
government that they don’t want to
invest their time, energy and resources
in non-issues. They hardly make an
effort towards it.
Where do you see Goonj 10 years
down the line?
We don’t see growth as the growth of the
organisation – we want growth of the idea
that we are trying to establish. We want
people to replicate and get inspired by our
initiative.
ernment. Those who talk about sustainable
development my question to them is: What
is their approach to it?
How do conferences like this
help?
I like this particular conference at XLRI
because the format is simple and plain. And
coming to such conferences might not have
a direct impact. But if we are able to moti-
vate even 2 percent of the crowd who will
go back and do something about it then it
is a success for us. When we began Goonj
nobody knew about it but maybe through
word of mouth or by speaking at conferenc-
es like this the message did go out. So there
is some direct and indirect impact that these
conferences and participation in them has.
What is your take on integrating
social entrepreneurship with the
existing government schemes?
Absolutely! A social entrepreneur should
begin with the existing structures first.
Infact our digging the well initiative with
Anshu Gupta
Founder-Director, Goonj
conference speakers anshu gupta, Michelle chawla and stan
thekaekara talk of their initiatives and discuss sustainable
growth. excerpts from the interviews.
