How many females still remember their grandmother or mother telling them to not touch the pickle jar or the iron almirah or enter the kitchen while menstruating? Forget that, how many of them knew what menstruating is until one fine day they caught the sight of blood from a source unknown and had panicked for help? Well, if you knew about it, congratulations! And if you didn’t, you’re welcome to my club. According to a study conducted by Dasra in 2019, only 48% of adolescent girls are aware of menstruation prior to their first period.
The stigma is so deeply inserted for so many years that de-stigmatizing it would itself takes generations of education and awareness, and this tale would be for some other day to tell.
Well, a citizen one’s direct source of reliant information lies in the hands of the government, and to reveal government’s stand on Menstrual Health Management, there is an ample number of schemes which intend to guarantee the hygiene and safety for menstruating females.
Firstly, our very own very popular Swachh Bharat Mission where an integral part is “Swachh Bharat, Swachh Vidyalaya,” where at the school-level, WASH programmes are promoted and especially menstrual health is promoted via ensuring separate private spaces, separate toilets for females etc. And, it is very well a mandate by the RTE act of 2009 for the states to provide proper sanitation facility in every school.
But, a parliamentary study (UDISE+, 2017) shows that more than 21000 government schools lack the facility, and even if they do, they still struggle for adequate water supply.
Secondly, the National Health Mission considers Menstrual Health Management as an integral part of its agenda and aims to spread menstrual hygiene awareness through its programme called as Menstrual Hygiene Scheme since 2011, way before Swachh Bharat Mission could be an heir to this.
In this scheme, the Anganwadi workers and ASHA workers are assigned to distribute a pack six pads for ₹6/-, the new subsidized rate in 2014.
Thirdly, the Rajiv Gandhi Scheme for Empowerment of Adolescent Girls-SABALA programme was initiated in the year 2010. Yes, in 2010! It was under the monitoring authorities of the ICDS programme (Integrated Child Development Scheme, 1975). The channels used for awareness were again the ASHA workers and the Anganwadi workers.
The objective to present these schemes in a reverse chronology is simple: to emphasize how every scheme is built upon the previous one and has seen no innovation in years. In India, where every year almost 23 million girls drop out of schools due to menstruation-related problems like lack of proper sanitation, awareness and most importantly, the lack of availability of sanitary napkins, it is a principal concern to ensure that no girl child is deprived of education because of a biological phenomenon.
According to the statistics released by the Ministry of Health and Family welfare, only 12% of the 335 million menstruating population in India has access to sanitary napkins, which is indeed a bizarre number considering the number of policies and schemes the government has put in place for the past decade.
A decade long time and still stories of females talking in the corner of a ladies room about their first-period experience with a shy smile? Says a lot about the kind of awareness we were expecting to surface! Well, if the mere talk of the period is surrounded by stigma, then the future of more sustainable menstruation products like menstrual cups still lies in oblivion.