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Women's Health Education Program (WHEP) Blog Arunachalam Muruganantham

Menstruation Hygiene Products

June 16, 2023
By Jahnavi Meka, MS4, Drexel University College of Medicine

Husband.1 Visionary. Social entrepreneur. One of 2014 Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.2 Recipient of the Padma Shri (the fourth highest civilian award) from the government of India in 2016.3 Subject of the 2018 short film “Period. End of Sentence.”4 as well as the critically and commercially successful 2018 Bollywood film “Pad Man” starring Bollywood star Akshay Kumar.5

Despite these achievements, few people have heard of Arunachalam Muruganantham. And even fewer can appreciate the full potential of the grassroots movement he began, raising awareness about the traditional unhygienic menstrual practices in rural India and offering an affordable alternative to standard sanitary pads.1

For context, India has a population of 1.4 billion individuals, with an estimated more than 310 million women between the ages of 15 and 49.6,7 Of these women, approximately 65% of them live in rural regions—around 200 million women, whose poor quality of life leaves little room for education or lifestyle improvement.8

The menstrual hygiene of rural Indian women is deeply tied to societal notions that menstruating women are “‘contaminated,’ ‘dirty,’ and ‘impure’”.7 Driven by misconceptions, poor understanding of female physiology and unscientific belief systems, menstruation is generally treated as taboo in Indian society, cloaked in silence and shame.7

Limited access to water and clean hygiene facilities, as well as the high expense of hygienic menstruation products like sanitary pads, add to the difficulties faced by menstruating women in India.9 Furthermore, the poor infrastructure of rural India makes it difficult for these women to properly dispose of their used menstruation products in an environmentally friendly manner.7 As a result, Indian women often turn to unhygienic but easily available methods of menstruation management, such as cloth rags, leaves, coconut husks and even sawdust.1

It was within this backdrop that Mr. Muruganantham’s journey began. In the early days of his marriage to his wife, Shanti, he noticed that she would use old, dirty rags to manage her period flow.1 When he questioned her about the unhygienic practice, she stated that, due to their low socioeconomic status, the family had to choose between buying sanitary pads for the women and buying milk for the family.1 Despite this, Mr. Muruganantham decided to buy his wife sanitary pads and discovered that these expensive pads were made from a white material similar to cotton, an affordable local material.1 It was from this discovery that the idea sparked in Mr. Muruganantham’s mind: “Why not make a local sanitary pad for [his] new wife?”1

Unfortunately, due to the taboo nature of menstruation and menstruation-related subjects in Indian society, this was not an easy task. Though Mr. Muruganantham was able to create his first cotton-based sanitary pad prototype, he was unable to find volunteers willing to trial them.1 Not his wife. Not his sisters. Not even the women of the local medical college.1 So Mr. Muruganantham took it upon himself to trial his prototype sanitary pads, simulating a synthetic period using a pump filled with animal blood that he would wear as he went about his day.1 And despite having made his prototype pads from good cotton material, they did not function at a level equal to the standard sanitary pads.1 Furthermore, throughout this process, Mr. Muruganantham faced severe criticism and backlash from friends and family, even escalating to a divorce notice from his wife.1

Still, Mr. Muruganantham persevered, finally learning that sanitary pads were made not with cotton like he had assumed, but with a special cellulose derived from pinewood.1 And the production of that special material required a multi-million dollar plant, which drastically increased the manufacturing cost and thus the market price of a sanitary pad.1 Unwilling to be deterred, Mr. Muruganantham spent four years creating his own set of machines to produce the same special cellulose—machines simple enough to be operated by anyone.1

It is this re-engineered set of sanitary pad-producing machines that are the primary product of Mr. Muruganantham’s start-up company, Jayashree Industries.10 Though multinational corporate giants have attempted to buy out his invention for billions of dollars, Mr. Muruganantham has decided that his machine could serve as the impetus for a grassroots menstrual hygiene and sanitary pad movement.10 As such, Jayashree Industries sells the low-cost machines directly to rural women through local nonprofits and women’s self-help groups.1,10 Today, over 1,300 machines are installed across 27 states in India as well as in seven other countries.10

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