HYGIENE POLICY

URBAN SECTOR EXPERTS SAID THAT IT’S TIME THAT MENSTRUAL HYGIENE IS MADE AN INTEGRAL PART OF SANITATION POLICY AND NOT SET ASIDE AS JUST A HEALTH ISSUE

The Muzaffarnagar incident, where the warden of a school strip-searched 70 girls to check if they were menstruating, has brought the focus on how menstrual hygiene management is absent from the sanitation discourse.

NEWDELHI: Last week’s Muzaffarnagar incident, where the warden of a residential school stripsearched 70 girl students to check if they were menstruating, has brought the focus back on how menstrual hygiene management (MHM) is almost absent from the sanitation discourse in India.

The Ministry of drinking water and sanitation had issued guidelines to states in 2015 on MHM, as part of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) initiative but sanitation experts say its implementation has been either patchy or nil. The ministry is piloting the government’s ambitious sanitation programme to make India clean and open defecation free in rural areas.

MHM does not find any mention in the Swachh Bharat Mission guidelines framed by the Union urban development ministry, which implements the program in urban areas.

Issued in the form of advisory, the guidelines by the drinking water ministry mandates that public toilets should be designed to ensure safe and private entrance to women’s toilets, with proper lighting after evening.

Besides, toilet cubicles should be provided with a shelf, hooks or niche to keep clothing and menstrual absorbents dry. The advisory, which was re-issued to states on April 3, further says that incinerators should be built within the toilet with chutes directly adjacent to the toilet building to avoid transport of menstrual waste.

But officials say that at the end of the day these are just advisory and are not binding on the state. If states do not implement it, there is nothing the Centre can do.

“One of the reasons why MHM is not a part of the mainstream discourse on sanitation is because policy tends to think of infrastructure (including sanitation infrastructure) in silos rather than focusing on people centred design. MHM is a huge issue and impacts how women and girls use household, institutional, public and community toilets. Not addressing the issue in the sanitation discourse is akin to infrastructure violence on women and girls,” said Kimberly Noronha, senior researcher, Centre for Policy Research.

Urban sector experts said that its time that MHM is made an integral part of sanitation policy and not set aside as just a health issue.