Jhabua (Madhya Pradesh): Akshay Kumar's movie PadMan was one of the biggest hits of 2018, owing to its brilliant narrative that influenced many people. However, it was in the past and in reel life.
In real life, tribal-dominated Jhabua has Deepika Chandrawat, who is popularly known as "PadWoman" in the region.
Deepika was born and raised in Ratlam. She got married in Jhabua at an early age. While fulfilling her dream, Deepika has turned into a major source of inspiration for other women by setting up a sanitary pad unit to make them Atma Nirbhar.
Her husband owns a small grocery shop to earn livelihood. As a result, the family struggled to meet daily household expenses.
In 2019, she joined Shyam Bachat Group, a self-help group run by Livelihood Mission in Khawasa village. The group provided her with a platform to pursue dream of supporting her family. Deepika wanted to demonstrate her capability and contribute to economic well-being of her family and other women in the area.
After joining the SHG, she underwent a training that developed her professional skills and also empowered other women by imparting the skills they gained from the various trainings conducted by the Livelihood Mission team.
Seeing her hard work, Aajeevika Mission team decided to train Deepika and the women of her SHG to set up a sanitary pad manufacturing unit in Khawasa. Deepika grabbed this opportunity to do something meaningful for herself and other women in the Self-Help Group. In 2021, it started its journey as a sanitary pad maker.
Struggle in initial days
Sharing her journey, Deepika said that in the initial days, their manufacturing unit had a manual machine, which made the process of making pads long and cumbersome. Deepika then decides to install an automatic machine to save time and energy.
In the initial days, she had to struggle a lot. She discussed it with her SHG and the team at Aajeevika Mission. She visited Ahmedabad with women from her SHG and placed an order for a pad-making machine. Since then, it became her dream to fulfill the demand for menstrual products at an affordable rate.
Help from Mission Mahima team
Access to safe menstrual products is a major issue in tribal-dominating Jhabua. Deepika and her team members are trying to produce safe menstrual products for women and adolescent girls living here while generating livelihood for themselves and other women. However, this transformation has not been easy. She had to face many challenges.
Challenges such as limited knowledge of quality standards for sanitary pads, lack of market access, and non-payment for supply were major obstacles to Deepika's dream of fulfilling the demand of safe and hygienic menstrual pads for rural women and adolescent girls at affordable price.
The Mission Mahima team is constantly working with them to work out a workable marketing strategy and also meets quality parameters of menstrual pads with tips from experts in this domain.
Honoured by district administration
The district administration has felicitated Deepika on World Menstrual Hygiene Day. A programme was also started under the leadership of Mission Mahima to make Jhabua district a period-friendly district. The capacity expansion plan of sanitary pad manufacturing unit under the Mission Mahima programme has been prepared. A plan has been approved for convergence with 15 FCs to bear the cost of an expansion plan. Under Mission Mahima, they can now make 15,000 sanitary pads daily and send around 5,000 pads daily to Udita Corners set up in Anganwadi centres.
