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The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

bbc.co.uk

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Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#161

Post by PhasmaFelis »

NathanOsullivan wrote: post #5

So after all that he managed to lower the price from £0.04 to £0.025 ... is that a meaningful reduction?

I understand the difference is considerably larger taking inflation into account (the first price was more than 10 years ago). But more than that, he's opening up sanitary pads to public discussion and reducing the taboo, which brings them to women who previously wouldn't have bought them at any price.

And of course he's also creating jobs for women and helping rural communities be more self-sufficient. There's so much more happening here than just discount products.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#163

Post by sizzle »

apalmer wrote: post #146
jt2190 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... its actually good sense. It's only "good sense" if, and this is a big if, (a) we have a strict scientific understanding of what we mean when we say "unclean" and (b) we know that we have literally no other way of mitigating this "uncleanliness." Just as surgeons learned to sterilize themselves and their equipment once they had a scientific understanding of infection, we now have lots of scientific understanding…

No one knew scientifically for thousands of years why pigs were unclean. Or shellfish, or 80% of the stuff that was considered 'unclean' food according to the first testament. Now a days there is a particular scientific explanation for it... traditionally it was the pig rolls around in its own feces, and smells bad, and folks seem to get sick from its meat... the menstruation situation, its bloody, it smells bad, and…

last time I checked, these rural villagers do not have running water which affects how they bathe, clean clothes, prepare food etc. Add in religious rituals and you have some powerful persuasion to do things in a way that seems backwards to us.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#164

Post by Natsu »

yawz wrote: post #148
nsxwolf wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not aware of an obsession with menstruation in any major variant of Christianity.

Woman being unclean during menstrual cycle is part of Abrahamic religions. But I guess this comes from the bigger problem of "sex" being wrong unless it constitutes "breeding".

Actually some of those regulations are more akin to health regulations. Granted, they didn't understand disease at the time, but they were able to find things associated with it to avoid, like contact with blood.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#165

Post by noselasd »

jsmeaton wrote: post #65
dsego wrote: post #57

Why buy disposable pads when you can use rags and wash them? Same for diapers.

It says so in the article. Women felt shame leaving them out to dry since the subject is so taboo.

I'd also imagine regular washing such rags in overcrowded areas with an absence of infrastructure can cause issues - as would it be in places where people (mainly women) need to spend a significant amount of the day just to get hold of water.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#166

Post by srean »

Tuna-Fish wrote: post #56
hoggle wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think the decentralised approach would always be able to compete when we factor in transportation costs which usually make up a pretty significant percentage of the actual sales price with centralised mass production. Much more of the money stays in the local economies too. http://www.mapsofindia.com/top-ten/india-crops/cotton.html Even if this particular business model would "only" work in India it'd be a su…

> I would think the decentralised approach would always be able to compete when we factor in transportation costs which usually make up a pretty significant percentage of the actual sales price with centralised mass production. For non-perishable goods they are actually much less than people generally think. For a benchmark, shipping t-shirts from Hong Kong to LA in bulk costs less than 5c each. The total transportat…

This is true if companies are allowed to externalize costs. Down the line, however, someone's gotta pay the externalities. Usually the future generation. One can delay this, but it will catchup eventually. One manifestation is borrowing assets from an unrealizable future.

This is not to say local loops are externality free, but I conjecture they are more information-efficient and likely to get corrected quicker.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#167

Post by ballard »

sizzle wrote: post #163
apalmer wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one knew scientifically for thousands of years why pigs were unclean. Or shellfish, or 80% of the stuff that was considered 'unclean' food according to the first testament. Now a days there is a particular scientific explanation for it... traditionally it was the pig rolls around in its own feces, and smells bad, and folks seem to get sick from its meat... the menstruation situation, its bloody, it smells bad, and…

last time I checked, these rural villagers do not have running water which affects how they bathe, clean clothes, prepare food etc. Add in religious rituals and you have some powerful persuasion to do things in a way that seems backwards to us.

These are the same areas that unfortunately still have honor killings. Regardless, cultural judgements are not an absolute truth, and so other ways, no matter how extreme or foreign, can be tolerated. The frontier that can be helped is hygiene and self-sufficiency. If can start a sexual equality revolution in India, build a bazillion of these machines. A 3d printer as it were.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#168

Post by ballard »

nate_meurer wrote: post #128
auctiontheory wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still many taboos around menstruation in India. Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply - essentially they are considered untouchable. Every religion has elaborate rules to oppress woman. FYI, the Hebrew Bible has all the same stuff. (So I read in The Year of Living Biblically .) It's a question of "how literally does society obey those rules?" Will…

Thank you, quite right. The ongoing fight by (a slowly shrinking segment of) American society to continue blatant persecution of gay people is one of our most shameful failings. And I agree, the Church (big C) is largely responsible.

To be clear, which Capital C Church? There was more than one religious flock within Christianity.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#169

Post by pbhjpbhj »

nate_meurer wrote: post #128
auctiontheory wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still many taboos around menstruation in India. Women can't visit temples or public places, they're not allowed to cook or touch the water supply - essentially they are considered untouchable. Every religion has elaborate rules to oppress woman. FYI, the Hebrew Bible has all the same stuff. (So I read in The Year of Living Biblically .) It's a question of "how literally does society obey those rules?" Will…

Thank you, quite right. The ongoing fight by (a slowly shrinking segment of) American society to continue blatant persecution of gay people is one of our most shameful failings. And I agree, the Church (big C) is largely responsible.

>blatant persecution of gay people //

There is an active agenda attempting to legally force people to alter their actions to match others beliefs, "persecution" you might call it. Except it's not against those who have sex outside marriage it's against Christians - people who claim to uphold liberty of conscience simply will not allow Christians to express their views on marriage.

Marriage, in Christian terms and historically, is about creating community cohesion in order to provide a firm foundation on which to support the upbringing of children.

No matter how you legally alter the definition of marriage homosexual sexual union doesn't produce children.

All sexual activity outside of marriage is considered sinful within orthodox Christianity based on New Testament exegesis.

Christianity [generally] thus considers that homosexual sex is sinful in the same way as adultery or other pre- or extra-marital sexual activity.

Because you disagree with this analysis and it's foundational axioms doesn't mean you're being persecuted - whether you're an adulterer, a sexual idolater or whatever. It is sinful, you may peacefully respond to that however you like.

FWIW purity laws, ritual uncleanliness, sacrifices and such all ended with the New Covenant. It's a corollary to the very fundamentals of Christian theology; if you don't understand it then you probably have never read the NT and probably have no idea what Christianity is about.

Re: The Indian sanitary pad revolutionary

#170

Post by rachellaw »

matsemann wrote: post #35
igul222 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article mentions that commercial napkins sold for 4 rupees despite cotton being 1/4000th the cost, but also says farther down that the locally produced ones sell for an average of 2.5 rupees each. That's a 38% discount: significant, but it doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me. I imagine that if this catches on, the larger manufacturers will likely just cut their margins to compete. On a more general…

>> doesn't seem like a game-changing difference to me The big difference here is that there is women selling these in private to other women. No man behind a counter. When the women come together about this, it may end up not being such a taboo, and they get advise on how to actually do this. So the game changer here isn't the price, but the community and independence for the women evolving around this product.

+1

and also it's less frightening for a young girl (say, 12 or 13) to purchase from an older woman than an older man. In straight marketing terms, it's great for creating rapport and point of reference.

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