An entrepreneur in Chhattisgarh has developed in association with a women's Self Help Group (SHG) a hand sanitiser liquid with alcohol distilled from Mahua flowers as its main ingredient.
Hand sanitisers are currently in great demand as their use to clean hands helps keep Covid-19 at bay.
Yellow coloured Mahua flowers are one of the major forest products during summer. They are also believed to have medicinal properties. "The idea to develop hand sanitiser from Mahua spirit came to me when I could not obtain enough hand sanitizer liquid for the employees at my petrol pump," said Samarth Jain, who runs a company in Jashpur which makes agricultural and herbal products.
"Mahua trees are found in abundance in Jashpur area. Tribals make country liquor from its flowers. I thought we can use a more purified and distilled form of Mahua spirit as sanitiser in this period of crisis," he said. "After obtaining permission from the district administration and forest department, we roped in a local Self Help Group named Singani and developed sanitizer samples in three days," he said.