By Binny Yadav
I was in Standard VIII when I felt a sudden, unmistakable gush—enough to signal urgency and embarrassment in equal measure. When I asked permission to step out of the classroom, what followed was not care, but ritualised humiliation. My class teacher handed me a sanitary pad in front of the entire class, entered my name in a register, took signatures for issuing it, and announced that a pad could be given only once a month, to one girl, followed by a stern warning to all of us that we must carry sanitary pads in our school bags.
Menstruation, it was made clear, was a private burden. Any institutional support was a reluctant exception. It was humiliating and deeply shaming. Yet, I considered myself fortunate because I was studying in a girls-only school, and was spared at least the daily fear of exposure or the male gaze.
Decades later, the Supreme Court has finally said what generations of girls were forced to learn in silence: “menstruation is not an inconvenience to be privately managed, but a matter of constitutional dignity, health and equality”. By recognising that menstrual hygiene is an integral part of the right to life under Article 21, the Court has initiated a long-overdue constitutional reckoning.
THE JUDGEMENT: FROM WELFARE TO FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT
In Dr Jaya Thakur vs Government of India, the Supreme Court recognised menstrual hygiene and access to menstrual hygiene products as an intrinsic part of the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution. A bench comprising Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan held that access to Menstrual Hygiene Measures (MHM) is inseparable from the right to live with dignity.
The Supreme Court directed that its mandates be implemented within three months, requiring free distribution of sanitary pads, functional gender-segregated toilets, and safe disposal facilities in all government and private schools across India.
Crucially, the Court rejected the framing of menstrual hygiene as a discretionary welfare measure. It acknowledged that inadequate menstrual hygiene facilities have direct implications for women’s health, educational continuity and substantive equality, thereby violating Article 21. Menstruation, the Court observed, cannot be treated as a private inconvenience—it is a constitutional concern.
By maintaining that “menstruation is not an inconvenience to be privately managed; it has deep implications for women’s health, education and equality,” the Supreme Court firmly anchors its reasoning in Article 21 jurisprudence developed over decades. From Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India (1978) and Francis Coralie Mullin vs Union Territory of Delhi (1981), which expanded life to mean life with dignity, to Justice KS Puttaswamy vs Union of India (2017), which constitutionalised privacy and bodily autonomy, the Court has consistently recognised that constitutional rights must respond to lived realities.
A girl who cannot attend school because she lacks access to sanitary pads or a safe toilet is not merely inconvenienced—her fundamental rights are rendered illusory.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE SILENCE
The scale of the problem the Court seeks to address is both vast and persistent. According to a UNESCO report, later reaffirmed in subsequent UNICEF assessments, an estimated 23 million girls drop out of school annually in India, with menstruation-related challenges identified as a significant contributing factor. As per WaterAid-UNICEF study that “nearly one in four adolescent girls in India misses school during her menstrual cycle”, with repeated absenteeism often culminating in permanent dropout.
Government data also reveals structural gaps. The Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE+), maintained by the Ministry of Education, shows that while a majority of schools report the presence of girls’ toilets, functionality remains a serious concern, particularly in government and rural schools. Toilets frequently lack running water, privacy, locks, or safe disposal mechanisms.
The National Family Health Survey-5 (NFHS-5), conducted during 2019-21, further underscores deep inequalities in menstrual hygiene practices across caste, income and rural-urban divides. Adolescent girls from economically marginalised households face the greatest barriers to safe menstrual management.
Notably, there is hardly any “national mechanism that systematically tracks menstruation-linked school dropouts” in India. This is true even for urban centres such as Delhi. And, what is not recorded is easily erased.
WHEN MENSTRUATION INVITES PUNISHMENT
Institutional neglect also often mutates into cruelty. In July 2025, female students (10-15 girls) were stripped naked to check if they were menstruating after blood stains were found on a toilet wall in a school in Thane district, Maharashtra. The police action came after the mother of one of the girls who were put through the alleged humiliation lodged a complaint. Instead of care or medical support, menstruation became grounds for suspicion. Girls subjected to surveillance and violation is an extreme, but telling example of how stigma operates when institutions fail.
This incident was not an aberration. It reflects a deeper social mindset that treats menstruation as misconduct rather than biology, and it underscores why the Supreme Court’s insistence on free pads, privacy and safe disposal is not merely infrastructural but protective. Where systems do not provide dignity, authority often responds with control.
DELHI’S PARADOX: WHEN THE CAPITAL FAILS
Such failures are not confined to rural India alone. A domestic worker in my household once explained why her teenage daughter dropped out of a government girls-only school in Delhi shortly after attaining puberty. The school had a toilet, on record but in reality, it was a dilapidated structure with a broken roof, no functional door, insufficient and irregular water supply, and located in an exposed corner of the premises. Adjacent to the school stood a boys-only institution.
The girl avoided the toilets and the situation became more harrowing during menstrual cycles. There was constant fear, of being seen, mocked, or worse if girl used the toilet. The housemaid’s daughter began missing school. Eventually, she stopped attending altogether. According to her mother, several girls of the same age disappeared from classrooms around the same time.
If this is the condition of sanitation infrastructure in the national capital, the challenge of implementing the Supreme Court’s directions nationwide becomes starkly evident.
SANITATION, MENSTRUATION AND THE RISK OF VIOLENCE
The issue extends far beyond schools into homes and communities. The National Family Health Survey-5 confirms that millions of households in India still lack private toilets, compelling women and girls to practise open defecation. Peer-reviewed public health studies published between 2015 and 2022 have consistently shown that women without access to household toilets face significantly higher risks of non-partner sexual violence.
Data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), particularly its annual Crime in India reports for 2018-2022 has repeatedly documented rape and sexual assault cases occurring when women and girls venture out for sanitation needs, often during early morning or late night hours.
Menstruation intensifies this vulnerability. The need for privacy, combined with stigma and restricted mobility, pushes girls into unsafe spaces at precisely the moments they are most exposed.
A missing toilet is not merely an inconvenience, it can become a site of violence.
IMPLEMENTATION: FEDERALISM MEETS URGENCY
The Supreme Court’s three-month timeline is intentionally ambitious. Yet, sanitation and health largely fall within the State List, while education is a concurrent subject. Infrastructure creation demands land, funds, maintenance and monitoring—none of which can be delivered by judicial fiat alone.
Critical questions remain unresolved: Who will allocate funds? Will there be central assistance or state-specific budgeting? Who will ensure maintenance after construction? How will compliance be monitored?
Without clear centre-state coordination and expert involvement—public health professionals, educators, gender specialists and urban planners—the risk is that compliance will be cosmetic rather than transformative.
BEYOND INFRASTRUCTURE: CHANGING THE SOCIAL SCRIPT
Pads, toilets and disposal facilities are essential, but they are not enough. Sustainable change requires a holistic approach: menstrual education in curricula, teacher sensitisation, grievance redressal mechanisms, systematic tracking of menstruation-linked dropouts, and community-level engagement. Above all, menstruation must become a legitimate public conversation, not a whispered burden borne by girls alone.
By recognising menstrual hygiene as part of the right to life, the Supreme Court has delivered a judgment that is legally sound, socially disruptive and morally urgent. It has shifted the discourse from shame to substance, from welfare to rights.
We have come a long way—from registers rationing a single sanitary pad to a Constitution that demands systemic support. Yet, the distance between judgment and justice remains long.
For a 76-year-old democracy, this recognition may be late—but it is indispensable. The test it sets is unforgivingly simple: that no girl in India is forced to choose between her education, her safety and her dignity because she menstruates.
If that test is failed, no judgment—however progressive—will suffice.
—The writer is a New Delhi-based journalist, lawyer and trained mediator
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