By Anurag Chauhan
For over a decade, I have been repeating the same sentence in different rooms, across different geographies, and to very different audiences. Menstruation is not a choice. It is something the body does by birth. And anything that is not a choice cannot be treated as a luxury. If menstruation is inevitable, then dignity in managing it must be guaranteed.
The Supreme Court of India’s recent recognition of menstrual hygiene as a fundamental right is therefore not a radical idea. It is a corrective one. The law has finally aligned itself with biological reality and social truth. What is radical is how long it took.
India is home to hundreds of millions of menstruating persons. Every month, they navigate school, work, public transport, and public spaces while managing bleeding bodies in systems that were rarely designed with them in mind. National data shows improvement in access to sanitary products over the years, yet access remains deeply uneven. Geography, income, caste, disability, and gender identity still determine who menstruates with dignity and who does not. Numbers may suggest progress, but lived experience often tells a more complicated story.
Menstrual hygiene is frequently framed as a single problem with a simple solution. Distribute pads. End stigma. Move on. But anyone who has spent sustained time in communities knows that this framing fails bodies. Menstrual hygiene management is not a product issue. It is a systems issue.
Over the last eleven years, our work on the ground has reflected this reality. Distribution has been one part of the work, but never the whole story. Alongside access to products, there has been training in making and using cloth pads, awareness and education sessions in schools and communities, testing and feedback on what actually works for different bodies, and long-term community building so that knowledge does not disappear when a programme ends. The most important work has often been the quietest work creating spaces where menstruation can be spoken about without fear, embarrassment, or judgement.
What becomes clear very quickly is this. A sanitary pad without clean water is a compromise. A toilet without privacy is an instruction to stay home. A school with products but no disposal system teaches menstruating students that their bodies are an inconvenience. Infrastructure gaps do not announce themselves loudly. They show up as absenteeism, infections, anxiety, and silence.
The Supreme Court’s judgment matters because it reframes this reality as a rights issue, not a behavioural one. It shifts responsibility away from menstruating persons having to manage better and places it where it belongs on institutions having to function better.
Yet rights on paper are fragile. They can be diluted through poor implementation or reduced to symbolic gestures that look progressive but change little on the ground. The risk ahead is not opposition. It is oversimplification.
One persistent mistake is treating menstruation as a women-only issue. Biology does not support this framing. Transgender men and transgender persons menstruate too, yet remain largely absent from policy design, sanitation planning, and educational systems. When rights are framed through narrow language, exclusion becomes structural. Inclusive policy is not about sensitivity alone. It is about accuracy.
Men also have a role to play, but it must be the right one. Silence sustains stigma. Control creates harm. What is needed is informed allyship listening without embarrassment, normalising without domination, and understanding that menstruation is not a favour to be accommodated but a reality to be designed for.
There is also a growing risk of menstrual hygiene becoming performative. Campaigns that rely on spectacle or aestheticised poverty may generate attention, but they rarely generate dignity. Real change is slower. It happens when toilets function every day, not just on inspection days. When teachers speak plainly. When families stop transferring shame from one generation to the next. When menstruation no longer requires courage to mention.
The way forward must be thoughtful and grounded. Central directives must meet local wisdom. What works in one region may fail in another. Climate, culture, economic realities, and lived practices must shape solutions. People who menstruate must not be treated as beneficiaries of policy, but as participants in shaping it.
The path to implementing the Supreme Court judgment requires alignment across all sectors. For government, menstrual hygiene must move beyond schemes to systems embedded in health, education, and public infrastructure planning. Functional toilets, water access, privacy, and safe disposal are non-negotiable, and monitoring must focus on real outcomes: attendance, health, and dignity. NGOs are most effective when they bridge policy and lived experience, working through education, training, skill-building, and long-term community engagement, including for transgender men and transgender persons. Schools are critical spaces where dignity is shaped every day; facilities, trained teachers, and gender-inclusive education must be standard. The private sector too must act, treating menstrual hygiene as a matter of health and dignity with workplace policies, facilities, and responsible innovation. When all these actors act together, menstrual hygiene stops being an issue to be fought over. It simply exists.
Menstrual hygiene does not exist in isolation. It intersects with education, nutrition, mental health, disability access, caste realities, and the design of public spaces. When a menstruating person is forced to choose between dignity and participation, the loss is not individual. It is societal.
For eleven years, the argument has remained unchanged. Menstruation is not a choice. Therefore dignity cannot be conditional. It cannot depend on charity, sympathy, or convenience. It must be built into systems as a matter of right.
The Supreme Court has taken an essential step by recognising this truth. What follows will determine whether this moment becomes another well-quoted judgment or a genuine turning point. If we proceed with care, humility, and attention to lived realities, menstruation will eventually stop being a subject that demands courage to discuss. It will simply be supported quietly, respectfully, and without judgement.
That is not just progress. That is what justice looks like when it finally pays attention to bodies.
(Anurag Chauhan is the founder of Humans for Humanity and initiated its WASH project 11 years ago, focusing on menstrual hygiene management, access, and dignity. His work has reached more than 5 million women across multiple regions of India through sustained engagement with schools, communities, and policy spaces.)
