In what comes as the best news of the day, sanitary napkins have been exempted from GST, as the council reduced taxes on multiple products of day-to-day use. Acknowledging the step, actor Akshay Kumar took to Twitter to thank the officials mentioning how important it is to think about menstrual hygiene. He posted:
[embed]https://twitter.com/akshaykumar/status/1020713650515070976[/embed]
The GST tax on sanitary pads have been cut from 12 per cent to zero, announced Finance Minister Piyush Goyal on July 21.
The development has been considered as a win after a series of arguments, debates and discussions around the subject. It was being argued that a sanitary pad is a basic health need and not a luxury product and therefore, extra taxes should be removed from the product.
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Akshay Kumar launching sanitary napkin vending machine with Aditya Thackeray (IANS)[/caption]
Hindi film industry contributed a lot to the cause. PadMan, directed by R Balki and featuring Akshay Kumar in the lead, aimed at creating awareness about the female menstrual hygiene to a larger part of the country. In fact, even after its release, Akshay kept talking about the cause by organising various seminars, discussions and by actively meeting women in the rural belt of the country to educate them about the need of using sanitary pads.
More than anything else, the effect of PadMan has been a reawakening of the authority's collective conscience to finally abolish GST on sanitary pads. The actor has moved on to GOLD and Housefull 4, but the cause of spreading awareness on menstrual hygiene remains close to his heart.
Forget Superman, Batman and Spiderman... say hurrah for PadMan!
