Sanitary pad manufacturer offers year-long supply to Bihar school girl who got ‘condom’ reply from IAS officer
The Bihar school girl, who was rebuked by an IAS officer after she asked for affordable sanitary pads at a workshop aimed at “enhacing the value of girls”, has been given an offer of a year-long supplies by an Indian manufacturing company.
Chirag Pan, CEO of PAN Healthcare, told news agency ANI that menstrual hygiene has long been considered a “taboo subject” in India, and is typically discussed in “hushed voices for generations”.
“This must change. We need many more girls to come forward and boldly demand open discussions about period bleeding,” Pan was quoted as saying.
Calling the year-long offer to the girl as a “small token of our appreciation for her conviction to put an end to the hypocrisy around menstruation that pervades society at large”, the CEO further stated that the firm will bear the cost of her education till her graduation.
The incident occurred in Patna on Tuesday where IAS officer Harjot Kaur Bhamra publicly ridiculed the young girl after she asked if the government could provide sanitary napkins at a cost of ₹20 to ₹30. The senior official in Bihar’s women development department was at a workshop that was organised in collaboration with UNICEF.
To the girl’s question, Bhamra shot back saying: “Today, you want a packet of napkins free. Tomorrow you may want jeans and shoes and later, when the stage comes for family planning, you may demand free condoms as well.”
When the girl said people’s votes determine who governs, the officer called the remark the “height of stupidity” and added that such people should go to Pakistan.
The incident drew major outrage on social media, with a BJP functionary Amrita Rathod taking to Twitter to take a swipe at the new JD(U)-RJD government of CM Nitish Kumar and his deputy Tejashwi Yadav. Sharing a clip of the incident on the micro-blogging site, Rathod said, “meet an IAS officer of the Nitish-Tejashwi government who asks a student to go to Pakistan for having sought sanitary pads”.
On Thursday, Bhamra apologised for her statement, saying she did not “intend to humiliate anyone or hurt anyone’s sentiments”. The 1992 batch IAS added that the workshop was organised to create awareness among “adolescent girls about the government provisions for them”.
“We wanted to motivate them to become self-dependent and confident enough to take their own decisions about life and career. It was during this discussion I asked girls to stop asking things for free,” Bhamra said in a statement, stressing that her “intentions were not wrong”.
The IAS officer, however, did not provide an explanation for ‘condom’ and ‘Pakistan’ remarks.
The incident caught the attention of the National Commission for Women (NCW), who took cognisance of the matter on Thursday, and had sought for an explanation from Bhamra.
Meanwhile, Kumar said that he has ordered a probe into the matter after he learnt about it from the newspapers.
