In what could be seen as an inspiration from Bollywood movie 'Padman', a sanitary napkin brand has launched a campaign to educate young girls and women about menstrual hygiene and provide them with pads at cheap prices.
Niine Sanitary Pads has installed around 130 vending machines at colleges in Delhi, Agra and Allahabad to help young girls, chief executive officer Richa Singh told PTI.
"Under the Niine movement, the company is installing vending machines at colleges. Women workers have been roped in to inform people especially in rural areas about the positive impact of using sanitary pads," she said.
The company has opened a sanitary pad manufacturing unit in Uttar Pradesh's Gorakhpur under the Centre's Make in India initiative to produce cheap pads, while ensuring that the quality of the product is not compromised, she said.
The aim of the movement is to eliminate taboos related to menstruation.
"In the past couple of months, more than 50,000 girls and women have been made aware about menstrual hygiene in Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Kanpur, Agra, Sitapur and Firozabad," she said.
Singh said that help in this regard has also been sought from self-help groups, ASHA and aganwadi workers.
"With the help of self-help groups, we are making a packet of sanitary pads priced at Rs 15 available to women and girls. Gradually, the movement will be started in states of West Bengal, Jharkhand, Bihar and Haryana," Singh said.
(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)