A full stop: On the top court, the right to menstrual health and hygiene

The perspicacious judgment of the Supreme Court last week encapsulating the right to menstrual health and hygiene into the fundamental right to life and dignity under Article 21 of the Constitution is precisely the kind of intervention needed, with all the power of Thor’s hammer. A Bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan wrote in their sterling judgment that takes a rare, rights-based, 360 degree view of the problem: “Autonomy can be meaningfully exercised only when girl children have access to functional toilets, adequate menstrual products, availability of water, and hygienic mechanisms for disposal.” Shifting the onus, the judges called upon the state to make menstrual health accessible to all girls and remove the triptych of stigma, stereotyping and humiliation that girls who do not have access to these facilities are regularly subject to. The judges noted that this violates the bodily autonomy of menstruating girl children. Terming it as ‘menstrual poverty’, the Bench said that it hinders menstruating girls from exercising their right to education with dignity equal to their male counterparts, or students who can afford sanitary products. The Court ordered States and Union Territories to ensure that every school has functional, gender-segregated toilets, and wrote in punitive action for non-compliance. The state will be held accountable if government-run schools did not comply, and private schools can be derecognised.

The lack of access to health-care products during menstruation, even clean water and toilets, arises from a clear, gendered lack of equity. While the National Family Health Survey (NFHS)-5 data claim that the percentage of women aged 15-24 years using hygienic methods during their menstrual cycles has risen to 77.3% in NFHS-5 from 57.6% in NFHS-4, it still leaves about a fourth of all women of eligible age in the country adrift, without support. While the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has said that it has developed guidelines on menstrual hygiene management for creating awareness in rural areas, implementation has always been patchy and the energy is project-based, not sustained. Fragmented, though well-meaning, efforts by non-governmental organisations have formed the bulk of interventions for years now, but the ability to erase the stigma requires a larger force to act. With the judgment there is finally a chance of that happening. Commitment from a policy and financial perspective alone can ensure menstrual hygiene for all young girls and women and enable them to achieve their full potential. As the judges said, inspired by the motto of The Pad Project: “A period should end a sentence, not a girl’s education.”