The man who made a difference

I will tell you a story – this has all the ingredients of a success. A man could do anything for the love of his life and instead of picking the moon and stars for her, he did something more realistic – Prepared a sanitary napkin for her. What? What could he be thinking? We can talk of anything but this. Shame on him, bet he lost his family over this. Yes, he did, well almost. But he was unrelenting. Shunned by his mother, his wife and his community, he continued. This man was Arunachalam Murugnatham, and he was not some iPhone flashing, suit wearing, top notch. He was the son of handloom workers who went on to do random paltry jobs to run his family. Yes that is true love and that is the thought leadership that we use as a jargon in our air conditioned conference rooms. The man also possess funny bones. In an interview with BBC he says "Luckily I'm not educated. If you act like an illiterate man, your learning will never stop... Being uneducated, you have no fear of the future."

Arunachalam hails from a village in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu and has been referred to as the Menstrual Man in an award-winning documentary made on his achievements. He is the inventor of a low-cost machine which makes sanitary napkins. Most of his customers are women self-help groups or NGOs which train their staff on the machinery usage and procure the product to be distributed or sold. The machine has set a revolution of sorts in the rural India with Arunachalam being felicitated by the President. Arunachalam has featured in the Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World 2014 for his accomplishments. Through seed funding, he founded a company called Jayaashree Industries which markets the machine across rural India.

With such initiatives already in place in the remote locations, sanitary napkins still scare us in the cities. Carrying it in public, purchasing it from the medical store, or even taking it to the rest room in the office, this has been the biggest hidden truth of our lives. 

Gladly Bollywood is taking it upon themselves and big names like R. Balki and Akshay Kumar have collaborated on the subject. Titled Padman, the movie dedicated to the journey of Arunachalam is scheduled to hit the theatres in early 2018. We are yet to see the movie but bringing up of the subject on this scale is a commendable task in itself.    

While menstrual hygiene has been one of the primary factors for increasing number of girl student dropouts in schools, the issue has largely been unattended. Time and again there have been several petitions on reducing or nullifying the taxes on sanitary napkins. They aren’t luxury, are they? I would emphasise here that there is an absolute necessity for the bulk disbursement measures of napkins so more and more women can have access to basic sanitation amenities. A woman’s hygiene, her cleanliness is as important as a clean country. Sadly, this is not exclusively a third world problem, it finds relevance across the world. Tampon tax exists in the most developed of nations and there have been upheavals to eradicate this. Welcome steps have been taken by Kenya, which was the first country to abolish sales tax on menstrual products. Thanks to men like Arunachalam who made menstrual hygiene mainstream in India, because hygiene should never be a taboo, nor an exclusivity.