Handing out non-biodegradable sanitary pads to rural school girls who have reached menarche will not address their menstrual hygiene issue. Clean and functional toilets with water supply, awareness about menstruation, economical and biodegradable pads and more is needed, finds Puja Awasthi.
Anupama Shukla, a postgraduate in sociology adheres to the belief that menstruation is ‘dirty’ and any breach of its most potent taboo – to avoid the Gods – will draw calamities that are detailed in all religious texts. In a country of 355 million menstruating girls and women, such ignorance is rampant.
Yet Shukla’s ideas have potentially far reaching negative effects as she is the principal of a girls’ college in the district of Sant Kabir Nagar. Thus when she says that college is best avoided during ‘those’ days, human contact be minimised and daily activities suspended, Shukla is handing out dangerous pointers on an issue that has been ignored and wished away despite its life altering impact and huge implications for human development.
A plethora of large studies lay out the numbers – 23 percent of girls drop out of school when they hit menarche, 31 percent of women miss 2.2 days of work when they menstruate, girls miss 20 percent of school days every year while there is a 70 percent increase in incidences of reproductive tract infections in the absence of menstrual hygiene.
A smaller study which focussed on 2,579 girls and women in 53 slums and 159 villages in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Uttar Pradesh found out that while 89 per cent of respondents used cloth, with over half of them using the same cloth for more than one period, two per cent used cotton wool and the same numbers used ash to absorb menstrual flow while only seven per cent used sanitary pads.
More alarmingly, of the 63 percent who had access to toilets, 20 percent did not use them during menstruation for fear of staining it, and more than two out of five girls had no idea about menstruation when they started with their periods. Of those who had some idea, only 16 percent received any information in school.
There is a potential loss of about US $100 billion in GDP to India as a result of girls dropping out of school due to menstrual health issues and thus getting into early marriages and early pregnancies. More girls in schools means universal primary education and increased gender parity while contributing to eradication of poverty. Educated mothers also contribute to improved maternal health and reduction in child mortality – all of which figure in the Millennium Development Goals.
Against this backdrop, the UP government has rolled out an ambitious scheme, the Kishori Suraksha Yojana under which one pack of 10 sanitary napkins every month shall be handed out to all girl students in classes 6-12 in government and government aided schools. Of the many glaring gaps in that plan is its complete disregard of girls who have dropped out of school and those who attend non-aided schools like the one Shukla heads.