Project Malar

Project Malar

Primarily, the aim is to tackle the pollution caused by flowers at its roots and hence trying to minimise the water pollution caused indirectly due to this, and provides a livelihood mainly to female scavengers by employing them right from the collection of flowers to the manufacturing of the incense sticks.

“Flowers used in religious practice have sanctity, a reverence that necessitates discarding them respectfully in the water”. But we undermine the level of pollution this causes, since it tends to disintegrate in water and reduce the oxygen level, which in turn affects the aquatic biodiversity.“It is not just a case of caste discrimination, but also gender discrimination, as women are forced to do this basest of jobs”. Scavenging: a euphemism for the basest of work that a person can be assigned with is disturbingly prominent among the women of the lower class. Pollution and discrimination against woman have been prevalent in this world since the beginning of time, just the extent up to which it was present was different. Here, we try to address the issues that are deeply rooted into our society which inhibits the development of the woman who carries the stigma of caste.

Since the project is in its rudimentary and developing stage, we are focussing more on the quality of the incense sticks rather than the quantity. Intense research has already gone into developing the current product formula and is still going on to maximise the life and the fragrance of the incense sticks. Around 50 boxes of it has already been made. The main workforce who puts in the magnanimous effort is the ladies of the Thirusulam slum. They are very thankful for the work they've received and we are thriving to eradicate the misconception about the scavenging activities and also aiming to bring the woman workforce to the forefront. We also have an enthusiastic student workforce who tirelessly works for the betterment of the quality of our product and constantly pitching ideas to maximise the profit outcome for the benefit of the woman workforce.

Recently VIT Chennai acknowledged the efforts the team had put into the project. On International Women's Day, they awarded the workforce with a flower grinding machine; a contemporarily relevant and helping gift which reduced the amount of manual labour they had to put. This day was also marked as the product launch of our project. We are thankful that our college believes in our cause and supports us in our mission and we truly feel that this is the first milestone of our project and we are determined for more.