As a lifelong supporter of Indian crafts, I have always rued the fact that so few traditional craftsmen go beyond making the same products that their forefathers made before them. So imagine my excitement when I finally get the chance to chat with the Gujarati potter Mansukhbhai Prajapati — inventor of Mitticool, India’s first terracotta refrigerator that works without electricity. He’s also developed water filters, non-stick griddle pans and pressure cookers — all from clay. To think it all began when Mansukhbhai flunked class 10…
“I wanted to do something on my own, not work for someone else,” he says, “but had no seed capital…” A young but determined Mansukhbhai worked for a while before a money lender loaned him Rs 30,000. With the money, he returned to the business of his forefathers — pottery, and set up a small factory that made earthenware griddles (tawas). “I modified a press that helped us make 600 tawas daily (as opposed to 100 a day by hand). Then I cycled from village to village selling them,” he recounts. After this, he experimented with water pots, matkas. “I made a filter candle to put inside the matka that would filter water as it cooled…” says he. The water filter matkas were so effective that they reportedly converted cola drinks into plain water!
Then disaster struck. The earthquake that shook Bhuj in 2001 destroyed most of Mansukhbhai’s stock. A local newspaper ran a photo of his broken water filters with the headline — “Broken fridges of poor”. “This fateful caption got me thinking about making a clay fridge that even poor people without access to electricity could use,” he says. Thus Mitticool was born. Based on the principle of evaporation, the Mitticool fridge contains water in the upper chamber that drips down the sides continuously. As it evaporates, the inner chambers are cooled. “So the upper chamber stores drinking water, and the lower two chambers can be used to store fruit, vegetables and milk,” Mansikhbhai explains. With the help of Dr Anil Gupta of the Gujarat Grassroots Innovation Augmentation Network (GIAN), Ahmedabad, Mansukhbhai launched Mitticool in 2005. Mitticool turned out to be a hit — its maintenance costs were minimal, and the fact that it ran without electricity was a boon for villages where power was in short supply.
After the success of Mitticool, Mansukhbhai experimented again. “Non-stick griddles in the market were too expensive,” he says. So he tried non-stick coating his earthenware tawas. The results were good — “the tawas are much cheaper and food made on them tastes wonderful,” he says, “and the best thing is that even the poor can afford my products!”
Today, Mansukhbhai has come a long way from his own days of penury. “We sell a minimum of 50 fridges, 500 filters, 500 pressure cookers and 1,000 griddles in a month,” he says. Mitticool has won many national and international awards, notably the one from National Innovation Foundation. Former president APJ Abdul Kalam dubbed this humble potter from Wankaner a “true scientist”. Recently, National Geographic also awarded him the title of International Eco Hero (2010).
“Now, I’m dreaming of making a Mitticool house — a house that is naturally cooler by 10-15 degrees compared to the outside,” he says, “that too without fans!” What drives him to constantly work on new ideas, I ask. “I don’t really know,” he shrugs, “I just enjoy doing different things, I guess.”