In a country, where there have been several deaths in a row over hygiene issues due to an exorbitant price in sanitary napkins, the recent GST decision planned and chalked out by Finance Minister-Arun Jaitley have decided to charge as much as 12% tax on sanitary napkins. Upon the doled out decision, women all around are up with angst and bitterness for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
70 years since India gained independence, and still its male-dominated society have failed women with all ways possible: from holding back justice over several rapes to forcing her to into handling soups and ladles when she aspired to hold the pen, from raising questions on her morals when she demanded equality to consider her outright downcast when she bled during the five days of the month to lock her within the walls of ‘traditions and customs’. The GST tax of 12% on sanitary napkins comes as a languishing reality check for women, not because more of rural women will now consider them as something implausible but also mainly because GST levies keeps things like condom, vermilion tax-free.
Women all across India have taken to different means of protest to model their disgruntlement over this egregious decision. To wear on vermilion or choosing to have sex is a choice whereas sanitary napkins come as a basic necessity to all women. Actress Konkona Sharma, in her disenchantment slammed this poor decision and raised questions on it asking about the ideologies that back this. To put a quintessential women essential under luxury good, that too when she doesn’t have a control on it is pure ‘stupidity’. When in India, you get the true validation of a woman only when you are able to stay in your ‘limits’- clad yourself well, cook well, satisfy your partner well and produce well, but when it comes to give back same amount of happiness to her in return of what she does for the society, we falter at the very root.
A NGO secretary Pooja Singh couldn’t help herself from commenting on this issue as well and was heard focusing on the need of menstrual sanitation for women of all regions, and claims the Government has simply mocked ‘womanhood’ on imposing such a huge amount of tax on the essential.
Just when the sanitary napkins brands had started taking to the various commercials and ads to publicize and spread the awareness of ‘periods’ and ‘hygiene’ besides urging women to use them for ease and comfort in life, and just when women from the rural regions had started to take this up seriously had comprehend the importance of ‘menstrual health’, this tax decision comes washing every bit of the initiative and effort away.
With the function of condom and sanitary napkins to all, how is it so hard for the rule-makers to understand the negative impacts of it, or in that case the hardships a woman must have to undergo in the long run following to the price hike of sanitary napkins? Let us just wait and hope, the Government doesn’t turns his deaf ears to all the protests and marches and does their bit to bring about some alteration to it, and helps us to soak in respite.
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