“Even if PadMan is able to make a difference to five per cent of the women who have not been using pads, it is still a huge thing,” Akshay Kumar had mentioned in the run-up to the release of his film PadMan. That was a very modest guesstimate, given that the film has sparked off a massive movement never seen so far in the largely veiled realm of menstruation issues!
It is frankly astonishing to see the kind of ripple effect the film is having. Not a day passes without more proof emerging of the positive changes PadMan is ushering in. And there couldn’t be a man more satisfied with this outcome than its ‘Super Hero’ Akshay who put every last bit of his power and passion to drive home the film’s message of menstrual hygiene and breaking period-related taboos.
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“Woman strong, country strong,” was the missive his character in PadMan delivered with such simple yet effective finesse in the film. Off screen, there wasn’t a single opportunity that the actor missed to ensure the film’s subject was disseminated across the length and breadth of the country. Why, the message was even carried abroad, as his bestselling author wife Twinkle Khanna discussed period taboos and period poverty at the Oxford Union!
Never before has a Hindi film actor been seen to pursue a movement as resolutely as Akshay did. Or has a Hindi film producer been seen to invest in as touchy a topic as Akshay did. Let’s face it, menstrual periods are one of the least attractive and most secretive topics in India. Even in the so-called urban, educated circles, women go to great lengths to conceal menstruation, most men are not even properly aware of what it entails, and shopkeepers continue to covertly wrap packets of sanitary napkins in sheets of newspaper like they were contraband.
And here was Akshay, taking the menstruation bull, so to speak, firmly by its horns. India didn’t know what had hit it! If he was revealing that like everyone else, menstruation was kept hidden from him at his home too, he was also letting you in on some shameful facts... that 82% of women don’t use sanitary napkins, that they don’t have the money or the awareness to do so, that they use ashes or leaves during their periods, which leads to infections and even cancer.
He asked some very pertinent questions: What is the point of buying so much of defence, when your woman is only not strong? Forget reducing GST, can’t sanitary napkins be free? And he let us know that it was time to break the taboos and let people know that menstruation is “a simple thing… a natural thing”. He did it in the way he knows best – via an entertaining film. “When a documentary comes on a silver screen, I have seen people go out to take munchies and all. But when a film starts, your eyes are wide open. So that means it makes an impact.”
He did it, putting his money where his mouth is. “I always had a feeling,” he shares about his urge to make socially responsible films, “but I didn’t have the money to make it. When I had money to make it, I started producing.” He was outright blunt at times, claiming, “I do not mind who I offend, or whose stomach I may turn by being so bold publicly. This is not the Stone Age, menstruating is natural. If this film can spread awareness about menstruation and menstrual health, I would say I have succeeded in my task.”
He has. From boys not flinching as they go out to medical stores to buy sanitary napkins for their mothers, sisters or girlfriends, to celebrities posing holding up sanitary pads, to government initiatives springing up to tackle the issue, Akshay has succeeded and how. “This, I think is the biggest achievement of PadMan... men and women breaking the taboo and discussing about menstrual hygiene,” he exults.
It is not a surprising outcome, actually. He had thrown all his might earlier behind Toilet: Ek Prem Katha, which tackled another taboo topic of open-air defecation. As a consequence of the film and government initiatives, the embarrassingly high figure of 54 per cent of the Indian population who defecate in the open had reduced to 34 per cent! The film had even caught the attention of American business magnate Bill Gates who praised it on Twitter, saying, “Toilet: A Love Story, a Bollywood romance about a newlywed couple, educated audiences about India's sanitation challenge.”
PadMan has not just educated audiences about India’s menstruation challenge, it has set in motion a series of positive consequences. Never before were free sanitary napkins made available to women in rural areas till a Pad Bank for the Daughters of Maharashtra was launched by team PadMan in collaboration with the state government. The initiative sees the state sponsoring 20 sanitary napkin dispensers across villages in Latur, Solapur, Jalgaon and more.
Even more inspiring is the more recent development that saw two students of Class XI from Jaipur start a Pad Bank for those women who cannot afford them. The girls set up 10 collection points where contributors can deposit the sanitary napkins. The concept is to deposit sanitary pads every time you buy a packet. What’s more, they have influenced 500 other women to join in the initiative.
Enhancing convenience and availability, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) is setting up pad vending machines on the premises of five maternity hospitals in Mumbai, which require users to insert a Rs.5 coin to procure a pad.
Even more heartening was the news of Chennai’s Sathyam Cinemas’ initiative to dispense free sanitary napkins across its properties. The initiative would be expanded to its other properties located in various cities. Considering the cinema chain operates 52 screens, that is a considerable commitment to a cause they feel deeply about.
The message of PadMan has even percolated a prison. Around 20 convicted women inmates at West Bengal’s Jalpaiguri Central Jail have been inspired to make sanitary napkins and provide them free of cost to vending machines in remote areas. With their effort, the women convicts hope to reach the women who have scant accessibility to menstrual hygiene products.
Hats off to the two brothers from Udaipur who have designed a low cost sanitary pad making machine that apparently produces sanitary napkins for the lowest rate ever of 90 paise per pad! The governments of Uttarakhand and Bengal have lost no time in acquiring some of their machines. In another unique initiative, the Western Railway Women's Welfare Organisation (WRWWO) installed sanitary napkin dispensers and incinerators for female staff at all its major offices on the network. The coin-operated machines inaugurated in Mumbai, Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Rajkot, Bhavnagar and Ratlam will enable women employees to maintain proper hygiene levels, while the incinerators will ensure quick disposal of used napkins.
In more good news, at a meeting chaired by Railways Minister Piyush Goyal, the installation of affordably priced pad dispensing machines at all stations was discussed. The move intends to minimise the woes of women commuters. There’s news that the New Delhi Municipal Council has proposed to install free sanitary napkin vending machines in all secondary and senior secondary Navyug or NDMS schools.
The list goes on… A Kerala IT firm asked its employees to donate sanitary pads to break taboos, a Rajkot GST office gifted a pad vending machine to a school, construction sites in Goa are being equipped with pad vending machines, women in Nagpur, Odisha and Madhya Pradesh are either manufacturing low cost sanitary napkins or procuring vending machines… The examples are really too many to enumerate. The movement has spread and there is no looking back.
To the Super Hero and his team, just two words – Thank you.
