Rekha Gupta writes | A promise to Delhi’s women: No more silence on menstruation

I promise every girl and woman in Delhi that this will not be a campaign that spans just one day or uses just one hashtag. We promise that the men of this city will be part of the change, not excused from it

For generations, the word “menstruation” has been carefully avoided in classroom conversations, in homes, and certainly in Indian public life. That silence ended on the 74th Independence Day, when Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the nation without reservation and spoke about menstrual hygiene. He highlighted the government’s efforts to make sanitary pads accessible to all women and brought an important yet often-ignored issue into the national conversation. The Prime Minister using a major occasion to mainstream the discussion on menstrual hygiene was refreshing.

Under the PM Bhartiya Janaushadhi Pariyojana, Suvidha sanitary pads are available at just Rs 1 per pad through Jan Aushadhi Kendras. So far, over 100 crore pads have been sold through these Kendras across the nation. For many women and adolescent girls, they symbolise freedom from hesitation, financial burden, and unsafe alternatives.

For generations, menstruation has been treated as something to be endured silently. This silence has cost our girls their confidence, our women their dignity, and our society its progress. For too long, that quiet anxiety has been treated as her private burden to carry. Taking inspiration from PM Modi’s initiatives for women’s empowerment, the Delhi government is launching the campaign “Menstrual Health Matters: Periods Parr Sahi Jaankari, Harr Beti ki Pehli Taiyaari”. The right information about periods is every daughter’s first and most basic preparation for life. The Delhi government will create a modern, future-ready, and viksit Delhi where every girl can attend school during her period without anxiety, every woman can go to work without fear or embarrassment, and every family can discuss menstrual health with scientific understanding.

The heart of this campaign is promoting menstrual health education in Delhi schools. The Upanishads teach us, “Tamaso maa jyotirgamaya (Lead me from darkness to light).” The stigma around menstruation is a kind of darkness: Not of the body but of ignorance, of inherited shame, of things left unsaid. We will launch a campaign in schools on menstruation and menstrual hygiene covering emotional well-being, active stigma reduction, and, crucially, health-seeking behaviour. It will ensure that a girl learns not only what is happening to her body but that asking for help is normal, safe, and her right. Additionally, this will be directly linked to awareness of HPV and cervical cancer. Cervical cancer remains one of the most common cancers among Indian women, and it is also one of the most preventable. By connecting menstrual health to HPV awareness, we treat a girl’s reproductive health holistically.

Education related to menstrual hygiene cannot be aimed solely at girls. We will also reach out to boys to help them understand menstruation and reduce teasing. Moreover, when brothers understand it, the home becomes kinder. When future husbands and fathers-in-law understand it, families will become happier, healthier, and more supportive. ASHA and Anganwadi workers, considered the backbone of community health in Delhi’s districts, will help spread awareness.

Regarding access, the government will issue a clear directive on sanitary pad vending machines. Our commitment is not merely to installing new machines but also to keeping them working, properly maintained, and regularly refilled. All sanitary pads will be biodegradable and compostable.

According to many estimates, a woman in India spends close to Rs 1 lakh on menstrual products over her lifetime. This is a tax on her body that she never agreed to. And every year, billions of disposable pads end up in our landfills. The Menstrual Health Matters campaign lifts the financial burden off women’s shoulders without adding to the mountain of waste.

I want to tell every woman and girl of Delhi: Your health matters, your comfort matters, your dignity matters. You were never meant to carry this in silence, and from today, you will not have to. The Menstrual Health Matters campaign will benefit you all immensely and improve your quality of life. When menstruation is treated as shameful, girls miss school and slip behind. Women delay seeing a doctor, and conditions like anaemia and infections go unnoticed until they become difficult to treat. This campaign will confront these challenges by starting an honest, scientifically informed conversation about menstruation, one that can take place within every family without shame or hesitation. I promise every girl and woman in Delhi that this will not be a campaign that spans just one day or uses just one hashtag. We promise that the men of this city will be part of the change, not excused from it.

Savitribai Phule, the pioneer who first opened the doors of education to the girls of this land, urged them: “Go, get education. Be self-reliant, be industrious.” That call still stands as knowledge of one’s own body is the most basic education of all, and self-reliance begins with the dignity of understanding what every woman lives with each month. That freedom begins with something as ordinary and as long denied as the ability to understand and manage one’s own body without shame. And that change is not built by the government alone; it is built in homes. The government can install vending machines, conduct sessions, and issue orders. But what we also need is a whole-of-society approach to break the stigma around menstruation.

Today, we must make a collective promise: To ensure that no girl in Delhi will be made to feel ashamed of her body. No woman will be denied dignity because of poverty, silence, or neglect. No family will be allowed to remain trapped in myths when science, care, and compassion are available.

The writer is the Chief Minister of Delhi