GoBarefoot Blog

GoBarefoot Blog

Connecting The Development Sector

Bleeding taxation

The menstrual cycle is the regular natural change that occurs in the female reproductive system. As a child I was not proud of my periods as they brought in a lot of pain with loss of blood from the age of 14 yrs but little did I knew at that time that periods define the fertility of a women (pregnancy is possible). To give birth to a child is actually a blessing but ALAS in India how much of “periods” we discuss with others is not even .01%. Currently there has been a lot of politics on the ‘taxation on sanitary pads’. Only a minority of 12-20% females have access to pads. The rest rely on cloth, sand,ash and even cow dung. KUMKUM,SINDOOR,BINDI,ALATA  are tax free and the very basic and important need of every female has been put under the tax slab of 12%. Looks like the GST council has focused on the red dot on the forehead and bangles on her wrist. We talk about importance of women in our country but after this GST rule we hardly see any. In village areas girls don’t go to school during their menstrual cycle as access to sanitary pad is zero. Not only most of the family don’t send their girls to school soon after her menstrual cycle begins because the red stain on her skirt will bring insult to the family. Families in villages can hardly afford the basic necessities and the government knows this very well, then shouldn’t it put sanitary pads under 0% tax slab.  The government is all about ‘ beti phadao beti bachao’ and at the same time  it  does such injustice to the ‘beti’. You know its like you are taxing women. When will our country open up to such issues rather than neglecting it all the time. Hardly I see anyone who talks about it. Because for the men it doesn’t matter and who listens to a women anyway …..

Now this is what we call “PROGRESSIVE INDIA” .

 

The red dot on her forehead was noticed but the red dot on her skirt was ignored.

 

Image source: http://bit.ly/2jayHFV

 

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