Madhukarrao Mantri

Founder

Madhukarrao Mantri is the founder of Mumbai Grahak Panchayat (1975)[1], an Indian non-profit working on road safety & civic and human rights from Mumbai.

Madhukarrao Mantri was one of the founders of the Mumbai Grahak Panchayat, a voluntary consumer organisation begun on Gudhi Padwa, 12 April 1975, together with Bindu Madhav Joshi and the singer and music director Sudhir Phadke. Accounts of the organisation's history credit Joshi with its vision, Phadke with its discipline and Mantri with its organisational structure.

Career

The Mumbai Grahak Panchayat was built around grahak sanghs, neighbourhood groups of at least twenty-five families who bought household essentials collectively from producers and wholesalers, bypassing the retailer and distributing to member families on a no-loss, no-profit basis. Mantri took charge of organising these groups in Mumbai, and the first distribution took place at Vanita Samaj in 1975.

The organisation has since extended to Thane, Palghar, Vasai, Raigad and Pune, operating warehouses at these locations and serving roughly 30,000 families through about 2,700 grahak sanghs with an annual turnover of around 90 crore rupees. It is registered as a membership consumer organisation under the Public Charitable Trust Act.

Recognition

A square near Cooper Hospital in Mumbai is named after Mantri as a pioneer of the consumer movement. The Mumbai Grahak Panchayat lists a memorandum for his centenary celebration among its honours.[2][3][4]

Mumbai Grahak Panchayat

Established on Gudhi Padwa in 1975, Mumbai Grahak Panchayat is a voluntary consumer organisation famous for its unique monthly collective grocery distribution system that serves tens of thousands of member families across Maharashtra's west coast. MGP also fights consumer cases, advocates on housing (RERA) and depositor protection, and has represented Indian consumers at UNCTAD.

Mumbai Grahak Panchayat reports the following, on its own site: