Menstruation, Myths And India

India is a land of multi-culture and heritage. As there is so much to appreciate about this glorious country, there is one factor which make the country fall down, that factor is `mentality and lack of awareness’.

A recent research declared that around 71% of Indian girls do not know anything about menstruation before their first period as menstruation is rarely disused topic at homes or publically. It means around 71% girls has faced the dilemma of being stained by blood. In India menstruation is a biological event not to be spoken about openly.

In India, the number of menstruating women is 355 million that is around 31% of the total population. From 355 million women, there are 23 million school girls drop their schools every year because of menstruation. In small villages there is lack of girls in the classroom above 7^th standards just because they bleed for 4 days a month and there is lack of awareness and hygiene, as these small schools don’t have toilets. Lack of sanitary pads and lack of awareness is also an issue. Apart from this infrastructure problem there lays a huge issue which can’t be conquer easily. That big monster is the mentality, orthodox thinking and superstition.

In villages and in cities also women are not comfortable talking about their basic physical problem just because they are taught from the childhood that this problem is unholy and not to be confessing in front of anyone and specially men.

The surprising fact is that among the 355 million women only 42.6 million women use sanitary pads. It means only 12% of women have access to sanitary pads in India. Another shocking fact is there was ban on sanitary pad advertisement in 1990 but there was a recent movie called `Padman’ a real life inspired story which smartly showed the importance of use of sanitary pads and its awareness.

This situation is healing day by day by advertisements, movies , social media but the question remains constant as these media tools do not touch the rural India. For them, the government has organized some schemes. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare launched the free day Pad Scheme, a pilot project to provide sanitary napkins at subsidized rates for rural girls. The scheme was launched in 152 districts across 20 states and sanitary napkins were sold to adolescent girls at the rate ofRs.6 per pack of six napkins by Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs). The estimated cost for the entire scheme wasRs.70 crore.

We can hope for the better future of angles in India who are still suffering from their own shame and mentality taboo.