Why You Should Care About The #LahuKaLagaan Campaign That's Blowing Up On Twitter

Friends, Romans, and (most importantly) Arun Jaitley, lend us your ears. We say Arun Jaitley because since yesterday morning his Twitter feed is being bombarded with a very important message - abolish the tax on menstrual hygiene products. More and more people are stepping up, tweeting their message along with #LahuKaLagaan to the Finance Minister in an attempt to remove the tag of ‘luxury product’ attributed to sanitary napkins and tampons, therefore, exempting these basic necessities from the Goods and Services Tax (GST).

SheSays, an NGO working to end gender-based discrimination and advancing of women’s rights, spearheaded this campaign and raised a very pertinent question - if beedis are tax-free, why not sanitary products?

While we roll our eyes at the thought of menstruation being considered a ‘luxury’ for women in any way, the fact remains that in India, access to menstrual products is a luxury many of us take for granted. The sad truth is that out of an approximated 497 million Indian women, only 12 percent use sanitary napkins/tampons. And it’s women in rural India that suffer the most. A study by the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR) 2015-2016, found that 93 percent of these women don’t use proper sanitary pads. With a lack in information, accessibility and finances, they resort to using rags, pieces of cloth, husk, sand and even ash. Reproductive Tract Infections (RTIs) are 70 percent more common among women who use such unhygienic materials and 70 percent of all reproductive diseases in India are caused by poor menstrual hygiene, which affects the maternal mortality rate as well. Girls are typically absent for 20 percent of the school year, most of them even dropping out of school after the 5th grade, when their menstrual cycle begins.

These astounding statistics are what drove SheSays to start this Twitter campaign, and they aren’t the first ones to call out this ridiculous tax. Earlier this year, Congress MP Sushmita Dev started a petition to make the sale of sanitary pads tax free, and Union Women and Child Development Minister Maneka Gandhi too wrote to the Finance Minister asking for the same - we still await his response.

Sanitary pads are an essential need for women for a large part of their lives. SheSays is not only working to remove the taxation but also demanding that all menstrual hygiene products be categorised under the Essential Commodities Act and to get more sanitary pads vending machines installed in multiple locations.

Let’s all come out and say it together—all women get their period, and it’s time everybody in India accepted it. We need tax-free sanitary products easily available for ALL women in the country, and you can help make this happen by tweeting your demand using #LahuKaLagaan to @arunjaitley.