India’s sanitary towel hero Pad Man bound for Bollywood glory

Menstruation isn't the most obvious topic for a blockbuster, but the story of how a lower-caste man from a village in India dropped out of school at 14 and became the unlikely champion of menstrual health in the subcontinent has become the subject of a Bollywood film released this week.

Pad Man, produced by actress-turned-writer Twinkle Khanna, based on a short story from her book The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, is inspired by the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham, a social activist from Tamil Nadu. A welder by trade, he set about creating affordable sanitary towels after discovering that his wife, Shanthi, had been using dirty rags during her periods.

"I wouldn't use that cloth to clean my vehicle," said Muruganantham, 55, who was named one of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in 2014. "When I asked her why, she said we would have to cut half of our milk budget to buy sanitary pads.

"I went to the pharmacy to buy her the pads as a gift. The shop assistant wrapped it in newspaper like it was a smuggled item. It was only 10 grams of cotton, but cost 40 times its worth. I thought of how most women in rural areas couldn't afford them. I wanted to change my wife from unhygienic to hygienic practices during menstruation. Everything started from my wife and now it's gone global."

While the all-singing, all-dancing genre may seem at odds with the complexity of the issue, both Khanna and Muruganantham hope the film will break down taboos that have a devastating effect on the health, education and social opportunities of women, particularly in rural areas.

In India, only 12% of women have access to sanitary products; the rest struggle to improvise, using old newspapers, rags and sawdust. The Indian ministry of health estimates that 70% of women are at risk of severe infection because of this. One in 53 women in India will be diagnosed with cervical cancer in her lifetime, compared with one in 135 in the UK.

Nearly a quarter of Indian girls stay away from school during their period, and the difficulties they face were brought to light in August last year, when a 12-year-old in Tamil Nadu killed herselfafter being humiliated by a teacher in front of her class when she accidentally bled through her uniform. At the time, the only menstrual hygiene products available were expensive imports, often only sold in urban areas.

But Muruganantham's quest to create a sanitary towel that would be cheap and easy to manufacture domestically, using locally sourced materials, was far from straightforward. For a man to drag the issue into the open was particularly controversial, especially in Muruganantham's conservative village. In one humiliating episode, without any volunteers willing to try his prototype pad, he fashioned himself an artificial uterus made of an old ball filled with goat's blood. When the ball split he ended up covered in blood in front of the villagers.

"I walked, cycled and ran with it under my clothes, constantly pumping blood out to test my sanitary pad's absorption rates. Everyone thought I had gone mad. I used to wash my bloodied clothes at a public well and the village concluded I had a sexual disease."

His quest took an emotional toll: he was ostracised by his village and his wife left him for several years, unable to cope with the humiliation. "My wife didn't understand me. She left me. My mother left me. This topic is such a taboo, even my mother won't discuss it with her daughter and here I was, a man, trying to do something. The community thought I was a pervert. They wanted an exorcism because they thought I was possessed by demons."

The lack of access to hygiene products was only half the battle. Tackling the misconceptions around menstruation was perhaps more challenging. "There are regions where it's believed that if an unmarried girl uses a pad and a dog smells it, she will never get married. We worked at a village where they believed if women went out after sunset during menstruation, they will go blind."

His breakthrough came in 2009, when he won an award from India's National Innovation Foundation - which supports grassroots technological initiatives - to make and distribute machines for the manufacture of sanitary towels in rural communities. The machines are operated by local women in each area, which provides much-needed employment while also spreading awareness about menstrual hygiene. More than 600 machines have already been distributed in 23 states.

Muruganantham hopes the film will help him fulfil his dream of making India a 100% sanitary pad-using country. "The film will create more awareness. We still have a huge task ahead but things are changing. I'm ecstatic to be known as pad man, as it makes a difference to women's lives."