India scraps tax on sanitary pads
NEW DELHI - India has withdrawn a controversial tax on sanitary pads following a vocal campaign led by activists and Bollywood stars to boost female education and empowerment.
Saturday's announcement is part of a slew of changes to the national goods and services tax, or GST, intended to reduce the prices of around 90 key consumer goods, many of which target urban middle classes ahead of next year's general election.
"I think all women will be happy to know that sanitary pads will now have 100 percent exemption. There will be no GST on sanitary pads," India's acting finance minister Piyush Goyal said.
Activists, Bollywood actors and some politicians had opposed the 12 percent tax that was launched in July 2017, citing a lack of access and affordability for a key hygiene product as a key barrier to female empowerment in the country.
A national survey report released earlier this year said around 60 percent of young women aged between 16 and 24 did not have access to sanitary pads.
Activists say removing the tax tackles one of the biggest barriers to education for girls, who are often forced to stay at home due to a lack of access to clean hygiene products, while also facing stigma and a lack of toilets in schools.
Periods are among the leading factors for girls to drop out of school in a country where four out of five women and girls are estimated by campaigners to have no access to sanitary pads.
"One of those days when a news brings tears of joy as a cause close to ur heart gets fulfilled," Akshay Kumar, one of Bollywood's most popular stars, wrote on Twitter.
Kumar was the lead actor in Padman, a Bollywood movie released earlier this year about the life of an activist who created a line of low-cost sanitary napkins for rural India.
"Thank you ... I'm sure crores (tens of millions) of women in our country are silently sending gratitude ur way," he said.
More than a third of girls in South Asia miss school during their periods, as they lack access to toilets or pads, and many receive no education about menstruation before reaching puberty, according to a recent report by charity WaterAid and UNICEF.
Afp - Reuters
(China Daily 07/23/2018 page11)
