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Political parties are late to recognize the challenges of sanitation and personal hygiene for female slum-dwellers in India
In the Mumbai local elections held recently, the Shiv Sena has promised to provide sanitary napkins for all slum-dwellers.
If I weren’t against the politics of xenophobia, I would give my vote to this party just for this promise. At least it recognises that there is an entity called the slum-dweller, that within this group there exists a sub-group called female, that within this sub-group the majority are menstruating girls and women who need access to hygiene.We all know how difficult life is in the five days of our periods. We have to make frequent trips to the toilet, keep changing and hygienically disposing off our sanitary napkins, and ensure that our clothes and body remain clean, all this while remaining secretive about the whole process. I once tried to do all this while on a trip to a village. It was nightmarish because it was impossible.
The primary difficulty was that there was no toilet in the house. Now, without a toilet with a closed door and flush mechanism, I don’t know how to perform. How does one remain clean and private? Where does all the sewage go? I came to the conclusion that sanitation and hygiene is on nobody’s agenda because most of the decision-makers are male who have absolutely no difficulty and face no embarrassment in going to the nearest open space and doing their business.
The issue of toilets for women is not one of aesthetics alone. Where there are no toilets, women do not move their bowels for days together, since going to open areas like abandoned railway tracks and so on is fraught with danger. One is liable to be teased, molested or worse during one of these visits. The desire for privacy means that the time for ‘going’ is at night, the most dangerous hour. And there’s no question of going alone. One has to form a group for security. The impact on health can be severe. Prolapsed uteruses are a common ailment amongst slum-dwellers.
I’m happy that there’s finally recognition of the needs of poor women. If we are to talk of income generation and empowerment, somewhere in the discussion we should also bring in the question of sanitation and personal hygiene, without which the woman is going to continue to feel threatened and weak.
*Photo credit: Peter Rivera
I'm an alumnus of Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and now a published author. My first novel, Cloud 9 Minus One, was published by HarperCollins India in 2009. read more...
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UP Boards Topper Prachi Nigam was trolled on social media for her facial hair; our obsession with appearance is harsh on young minds.
Prachi Nigam’s photo has been doing the rounds on social media for the right reasons. Well, scratch that- I wish the above statement were true. This 15-year-old girl should ideally be revelling in her spectacular achievement of scoring a whopping 98.05% and topping her tenth-grade boards. But oddly enough, along with her marks, it’s something else that garners more attention – her facial hair.
While the trolls are driving themselves giddy by mocking this girl who hasn’t even completed her school yet, the ones who are taking her side are going one step ahead – they are sharing her photoshopped pictures, sans the facial hair, looking nothing less than a celebrity with captions saying – “Prachi Nigam, ten years later”.
Doctors have already diagnosed her with PCOD in their comments, based on photographic evidence. While we have names for people shamed for their weight – body shaming, for their skin colour- racism, for their age- age shaming, for being a female- sexism, this category of shaming where one faces criticism for their appearance has no name. With that, it also has zero shame attached to it.
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