Putting things into reverse

Like the world’s press, I am finding it hard not to focus on the rise of the ultra right in the USA. Memories of just what woes can befall us through the insidious growth of populism are hard to put away.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s appointment of the dubious Stephen Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior adviser is worrying many since Bannon, through the Breitbart News, allowed for the airing of white nationalist views and radical politics.

Some commentators believe that the President-elect is not himself as extreme as the policies he has been voicing but they have only just stopped short of renaming Bannon, Svengali. Apparently, Bannon coaxed the presidential contender into some of his most controversial opinions. That may be true but it is clear that Trump was already partial to ethno-nationalism.

The decisive role of the US media in the years leading up to the election deserves some examination.

The Democrats wanted Hillary Clinton. The media largely went along with that and therefore ignored Bernie Sanders who was tapping into a constituency that was overlooked by his party. Sanders complains that the media were fixated on the Clinton email scandal once that arose and would not allow him to discuss issues.

Trump, however, did tap into the funk that a large part of the population had slipped into, and he knew how to get his message across.

Watching the pro-Trump Fox channel which never challenged their candidate and watching other US broadcasters that made him a mere joke was like being on two separate planets. Nobody was getting the story right.

Now the liberal US media are being attentive to the fact that they must keep guard as the purges and retribution in the Trump camp have begun. The soul-searching about how Trump stole victory from under their noses and the open fear of what will come next are pervasive.

The US has decided it does not want expanded healthcare, a regulated Wall Street or reproductive rights. It has chosen a different path. For relief, consider this revolution.

An uneducated man in India, Arunachalam Muruganantham, having grown up with sisters who used rags instead of sanitary pads because they could not afford them, decided he would make life for menstruating women more bearable.

When he discovered that there was nothing more to a small box of pads — that cost three days’ worth of groceries — than ten grams of cotton, he became obsessed with the idea of making an affordable sanitary pad for his wife.

After much trial, including simulating menstruation himself, and error (his wife divorcing him) and a lot of unhelpful taboo-shy feedback from his female relatives, he eventually was able to succeed in making a pad that did not leak and felt dry against the skin.

He travelled throughout the country introducing millions of women to his low-tech method of producing their own sanitary pads using machinery he had developed and produced. Now over 2,100 such local factories exist in India, run by women, and their pads cost a fraction of the luxury commercial varieties.

The technology has spread to many developing countries and now corporate manufacturers are seeking partnerships, but Muruganantham is moving in another direction.

Instead of greater efficiency in production he is innovating so that production could happen without electricity and reach even poorer women. He is determined that the percentage of women wearing sanitary pads should go from ten percent to 100, and not only in India.

Forced by circumstance, India’s innovators are mastering lowtech adaptations of imp or t e d technologies.

What will Trump have to say about that?