The earth at this innovator’s feet


Mansukhbhai Prajapati remoulded his family’s struggling pottery business to produce the Mitticool range of ingenious earthenware, including a fridge that works without electricity. 

Reporting on the devastation and thousands of lives lost during the 2001 earthquake in Gujarat, local newspapers had this intriguing headline describing the havoc wreaked at a potters’ colony: ‘Garibon nafridge no bhookon’ (Pieces of the poor people’s fridge). Among the debris were the shards of hundreds of broken clay pitchers.

That headline proved to be a game-changer for Wakaner-based potter Mansukhbhai Prajapati, who literally picked up the pieces to begin afresh on a remarkably innovative idea — the Mitticool refrigerator, which is made of mud and works without electricity.

Originally from Morbi village in Rajkot, south Gujarat, Prajapati, a tenth-standard dropout, began working at a tea-stall after his father discouraged him from entering the family’s pottery business as the income was negligible. Later, he became a supervisor at a roof-tile manufacturing company and eventually, in 1989, returned to his passion for pottery by producing tavdi or tawa (frying pan) from clay.................Read more

 

Source: BusinessLine


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