-Down to Earth The report emphasises the need to normalise menstruation by looking at behaviour, infrastructure, politics and perception In an aim to make India open defecation-free by 2019, many aspects of sanitation have been undermined, such as usage, maintenance and water availability. A 2015 report by Dasra, a Mumbai-based philanthropy foundation and the Bank of America highlights another key aspect ignored when it comes to sanitation. According to the report based on data...

-Livemint.com The government should put greater emphasis on behaviour change than construction of toilets In 2014, more than half of India’s population still practised open defecation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi set his government the goal of making the country open defecation-free in five years, by the 150th anniversary of M.K. Gandhi’s birthday in 2019, by launching the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA). Three years later, we are more than halfway into that period,...

-The Times of India NEW DELHI: Acknowledging that women are a disadvantaged section despite comprising nearly half of the population of the country, the Centre is considering lowering income tax for single women, introducing Aadhaar-linked health cards for free basic health check-ups for women and cashless medical service for those who are pregnant. A national policy for women, framed by a group of ministers headed by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj, is...

-The Hindu Several youth collectives in the State are campaigning to make menstruation a hygienic and normal experience for women Her eyes welled over with pain. A victim in her own body, She crawled into a corner, bleeding. ‘Don’t talk about it’, she was told. Haiku #40 by Saurav Harigovind, MES Medical College Don’t. Don’t is the first lesson that a girl newly inducted to womanhood learns. Do not let anyone know that you bleed, especially men....

-The Hindu An online community is prodding women to adopt eco-friendly methods such as reusable cloth pads and menstrualcups and reverse the reliance on the feminine hygiene product Remember the popular sanitary napkin advertisement that urged menstruating women to “touch the pickle”? While ad campaigns in the 1990s had a role in breaking certain taboos around menstruation, they also pushed a whole generation of adolescents into adopting sanitary napkins. Sanitary waste has...