No compromises

Apurva Kothari,35,and Diti Kotecha,30,collaborated on an idea they conceived nine months ago and they have sold 200 T-shirts all over India under their label — No Nasties — in a little over two months. “Ya,we are a T-shirt company. But there’s more to it,” they say on the website floated to sell these T-shirts for Rs 999 each. “We use 100 per cent organic and fair trade-certified cotton that comes from the Vidarbha belt,” says Kothari,who prefers being called Apu. Apu started taking keen interest in farmer suicides in Vidarbha while pursuing a flourishing career in technology management in New York. “Every 30 minutes,a farmer commits suicide in India. Something surely didn’t seem right about that… I wanted to do something about it.”

He returned to India in 2010 and decided to do “something more satisfying.” However,starting an NGO or selling products with messages to save the planet was done and dusted and did not fit into the scheme of things of Apu and Diti,a travel photographer. “I am not an activist and planting a tree was not going to be my way of generating support for a cause. I wanted to do something for the cause of farmers without changing my lifestyle or dressing style.” It is then that the duo realised that they will have to create a product that would sell on its own and at the same time support a cause. “A consumer would only be too happy if he or she buys what she likes and then learns that it also helps farmers in Vidharbha.”

Zeroing on the idea of a guilt-free,eco-friendly T-shirt,No Nasties decided to use only organic-certified cotton with a clearance from the Global Organic Textile Standard. “No genetically modified seeds,no synthetic pesticides or fertilisers,no carcinogens,no high interest loans,no child labour,no price exploitation,no (farmer) suicides!” they explain on their website. “There is a difference in the fabric too,which most people spot immediately after touching it. They say it’s so soft and comfortable that they feel like sleeping in it,” Apu says.

They also insist on fair trade-certified cotton. “The farmers themselves decide the price for their cotton,which cannot be below the market price. There are no middlemen,” Apu explains. He says most of what Indian farmers manufacture is exported and they get very little recognition in their own country. “With fair trade comes better prices,decent working conditions,local sustainability,and fair terms of trade for farmers and workers in the developing world,” the website adds.

Having tied up with ten designers,the senior-most being Anant Kulkarni — a retired professor from the JJ School of Art,No Nasties took off with some of the “coolest” designs indigenous to Mumbai — like one stating its latitudinal and longitudinal location or Diti’s own design of a “mulga-mulgi (Boy-Girl)” on the T-shits — available in three sizes and multiple colours.