Students from Gwalior, Madhya Pradesh, have started a campaign by collecting messages on napkins and once such 1,000 napkins are collected, they will be sent to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, urging him to get rid of the argumentative 12 per cent GST on sanitary napkins.
The initiative also seeks to make sanitary napkins free of cost.?
The campaign, which kicked off on January 4 has already garnered massive support on social media.
Indian women have been reminding the government that a sanitary napkin isn¡¯t a luxury however, so far, the pleas have fallen into deaf ears. The Goods and Services Tax (GST) on sanitary napkins has become a point of contention with political parties, citizens and activists accusing the government of neglecting the basic needs of the women.
The discriminating bracketing of sanitary napkins for tax purposes is a matter of grave concern because the government does not recognise the purpose of sanitary products as indispensable. To bleed or not to bleed isn¡¯t a choice.
What adds to the massive dichotomy is that the government has declared Hindu marital signifiers like sindoor, bangles and bindis as tax exempt; condoms and contraceptives are already tax exempt, but sanitary napkins continue to be taxed, and that too severely. There is no ambiguity in the priorities set by the government where non-essential items are considered to be more important to a woman¡¯s wellbeing than essential sanitary products.
A study titled ¡°Sanitary Protection: Every Woman¡¯s Health Right¡± revealed that out of the population of 355 million Indian women, only 12% use sanitary napkins. Over 88% women in India cannot afford commercially packaged sanitary napkins and resort to alternatives that are often handcrafted from old fabric, rags, sand, ash, wood shavings, newspapers, dried leaves, hay and plastic.?
Women lacking access to health and hygiene during menstruation are at a 70% higher risk of developing serious diseases such as reproductive tract infections, cervical cancers and are more exposed to urogenital infections like vulva vaginal candidiasis and bacterial vaginal infections.
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Approximately 20% girls in India leave school on reaching menarche because they have hardly any means of maintaining hygiene during menstruation. The problem recurs with women at the workplace.
The AC Neilson study also received its share of criticism because the researchers interviewed only 1,033 women, a sample size which is being criticised for not being adequately representative of India¡¯s population or diversity.
It is hard, almost impossible to turn a blind eye toward the grim state of women hygiene in the country, especially in the remote rural areas.
Periods are as natural as eating, drinking and sleeping, yet in India, it is more than often considered unmentionable.?
It was the unfairness of it all that impelled Sushmita Dev, an MP from Assam to start an online petition on Change.org demanding government make sanitary pads tax-free.
¡°Women are being taxed 12 months a year, for about 39 years on a process they have no control over.With the GST that is going to be implemented, a step needs be taken by the central government to make sanitary napkins tax free (like condoms and contraceptives) as it is an essential item which is a necessity for every woman,¡± her petition, that has since garnered nearly 3,00,000 signatures, reads.
It is also important to understand why taxes on such items existed at first place. As Barack Obama told an interviewer when asked about the validity of a tampon tax in the US, ¡°I have no idea why states would tax these as luxury items. I suspect it¡¯s because men were making the laws when these were passed.¡±
Commercial sanitary napkins are not cheap. Important to mention that there are government schemes to distribute free or highly subsidised pads but their reach is limited.
Even if a woman uses close to 10 pads a month and says the average price per pad is Rs Four, the cost comes around Rs 40 to Rs 100-180, given the kind of pad. In the urban scenario, this is a small amount, but considering the stigma attached to menstruation, most rural women deter to spend anything on personal hygiene.
Activists and such initiatives are putting forth a compelling question that if contraceptives are tax-free, why not sanitary napkins? The argument is laced with pro-poor opinion and such initiatives will only help make sanitary napkins affordable.?
Periods are not luxury. One can choose to be extravagant but cannot choose to menstruate. It is paramount this difference is understood.?