Gupta, a mechanical engineer, is the founder of the Pinkishe foundation, a non-profit organisation that runs pad banks across 25 states and Union territories, and works toward providing accessible menstrual healthcare products and literacy to millions of women. Since its inception, the organisation has distributed sanitary napkins to four million women free of cost. Apart from distributing pads, Pinkishe also provides menstrual and reproductive health literacy and advocacy to women and girls, especially in rural areas. “It all started when my daughter insisted she wanted to start work on the problem of period poverty,” he tells Outlook. His daughter, Khyati, started a campaign among her friends and classmates where she collected pads and distributed them among those in need. That’s where the idea of pad banks came from. “The network of women volunteers who work with us connect with us through social media or through our on-ground camps. These women go door to door to ask families to donate a sanitary napkin. These napkins are then distributed in camps.

“Initially, I was just helping my daughter’s small campaign. But eventually, I realised that this was no child’s play. She was serious and I became too. Then I realised the extent of the problem women face in India, even in accessing basic human rights.” Over the years, Gupta’s experience taught him many things about why period poverty continues to exist in India, despite massive strides in public health in the last few decades. “The main problem is lack of medical literacy and unequal socio-economic status of women. Menstrual healthcare is expensive and relying on donations is not the answer,” Gupta states. The former mechanical engineer also points out that providing supplies of disposable sanitary napkins also posed the problem of disposal, which has both ecological and social facets.

(This appeared in the print edition as "Reducing period poverty, one pad at a time")

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