GURUGRAM: Women from Daula and Jhamwas villages have brought about a social revolution by making and distributing sanitary napkins in their area and nearby villages.
Realising that the taboo of menstruation was depriving them of a very basic necessity, they fought social stigma and reached out to other women in Gurugram and Mewat, even before Akshay Kumar's film 'Pad Man' started creating a buzz. The film is based on the life of Arunachalam Murugantham, a social entrepreneur from Tamil Nadu who invented low-cost pad-making machines.
These 'pad women' are now set to be part of the state government's project of distributing pads among school girls as part of the
menstrual hygiene scheme. The scheme was launched in February 2014 in five districts of Haryana (not including Gurugram) and so far, more than 8 lakh adolescent girls have been covered under it. Now, the scheme will cover all government schools in the state and Miss World Manushi Chhillar has been chosen as its brand ambassador.
The pads were earlier provided at a low cost but on January 26, state minister for women and child development Kavita Jain announced it would be distributed for free now. "The pads manufactured by self-help groups will be procured by the government and distributed among adolescent girls. The age group of 10 to 19 years will be covered under the scheme," said Jain.
Daula also known as the President's village is situated in Sohna area. In what appears to be any other house in the village, eight 'pad women' make the pads using fibre cloth and cotton and distribute them among women in Daula, Alipur, Harchandpur and other nearby villages.
Their outfit, Sakhi, was established by an NGO, Niswartha Kadam, whose founder, Pramod Raghav, claimed to have purchased the pad-making machine from Murugantham himself. Sakhi provided an alternate option to rural women who found it embarrassing to buy sanitary napkins from shops in Daula as the shopkeepers knew them. Earlier, women even went to markets outside the village to buy pads. However, some of them were not even aware that the product could be bought from shops.
One of the 'pad women', Babita (45), said that she didn't even know that sanitary napkins existed. Today, she works at Sakhi. "Our daughters wouldn't go to school because of the stains they would get on the uniform. The sheer discomfort of using cloth or cotton is beyond words, especially when we have to do household chores or cattle rearing," said Babita.
The centre was launched in October 2016 and had three women workers, including a widow, in the beginning. There were protests in the village against the "dirty job" as well as the inclusion of a widow in such a task. But things changed when the President adopted the village and it was included in the "smart gram" list. Today, out of the eight members of Sakhi, two are widows. "The villagers realised that widows need financial stability and the confidence of having a job more than anyone else. We have families to feed," said Reena, a widow who works at the centre. After her husband died, she had moved back to her parents' house in Daula due to financial constraints.
'Sakhi' manufactures nearly 600 pads daily. A pack of six sanitary napkins is sold for Rs 18. Further down the road, in Mewat's Jhamwas village, another such centre has been set up by the district administration in a move to promote self-help groups and provide village women with jobs.
"Some volunteers came to our village and said that there is a machine that can help us make sanitary napkins. They were giving initial raw material at zero cost. We had to put in the labour and buy further material from our income. Naturally, we accepted," said Jyoti, who works at the centre.
The Shiv Shankar self-help group started the
Taran Mahila Gram Sangathan centre in Jhamwas village in November 2017, but faced a lot of disapproval initially.
In one such case, the husband of a woman who now works at the centre objected to her taking up the job but she told him that if she could go out and buy sanitary napkins for herself and her two daughters, she could do it, too. Talking about it, Geeta said, "Even the women from the village started saying it is not respectable work and will bring shame to our 'beti- behan'. But now, they come to us and buy sanitary napkins."
Working seven days a week, the women produce 200-250 pads a day and sell these at Rs 35 for a pack of eight.
"We sell sanitary napkins to the women and young girls in the village but we want to give these to school girls and working women, too. We want to reach out to other women so that they have this basic amenity and the expansion will allow more women to join the work. From next month, we will distribute pads in neighbouring villages," said Nilam, who also works at the centre.
