It is an emotional day for Arunachalam Muruganantham as PADMAN the movie has been successfully made by KriArj Entertainment and slotted to release on 9th Feb 2018 in theatres. The movie starring Akshay Kumar centres on Muruganantham’s life. The latter became the first social entrepreneur in India to make cost effective sanitary napkins after discovering that his wife used filthy rags and newspapers during menstruation.
On 8th February 2018, Muruganantham wrote on Twitter.
It’s going to be an emotional day! @akshaykumar @mrsfunnybones @sonamakapoor @radhika_apte @pcsreeram @ItsAmitTrivedi @PadManTheFilm #PadMan pic.twitter.com/TZUQTXQCcT
— A Muruganantham (@murugaofficial) February 8, 2018
Muruganantham started making cost effective sanitary napkins in Coimbatore and approximately towards the beginning of the second decade in the millennium; he sourced his pad making mini-machines to 23 states in India (Each machine costs Rs.65, 000 as opposed to the INR 35 million setup used by big companies.) Muruganantham plans to expand his vision and cover over 100 nations globally.
It is truly laudable that a man alleviated suffering of the female members in his family and made unprecedented contribution to the society. It is also deplorable that the incumbent government has levied 18 percent GST on sanitary napkins that are made from super absorbent polymer and 12 percent GST on napkins made from thermo bonded non-woven material and wood pulp. If sanitary napkins are made tax free then all the napkins would be available to women at much cheaper rate. The Director of Centre for Social Research, Dr. Ranjana Kumari met the Finance Minister Mr. Arun Jaitley on May 17th 2017 with a delegation. The purpose of the meeting was to advocate for making sanitary napkins tax-free in India.
As an organization, we are happy that mainstream media has started discussing important social issues through their medium; thus creating a far reaching impact.
