Intimate hygiene and skill both matter for girls and women in Palamu and it was a message driven home quite moderately in Daltonganj recently wherein girls sporting shirts and jeans participated in the twin session of menstrual hygiene and self-reliance programme chaired by DC Shashi Ranjan and a host of officers like additional collector Surjit Kumar Singh, district welfare officer Subhash Kumar, IAS on Probation Dilip Pratap Singh Shekhawat etc under the aegis of Bailka Samman Samaroh.
The twin session was organised by social welfare office here which had to arrange everything at neck break speed following a last-minute change of venue from Pandit Deen dayal Upadhayay Smiriti Bhavan to the grand hall of block A where sits DC Palamu.
Dilip Pratap Singh Shekhawat an IAS trainee who now heads social welfare office said, “It was an overnight arrangement for this twin show because of the shifting of the venue and despite this health protocol was well in place.”
Sources reminded it was a forbidden thing for officers here also to speak a word on menstrual cycle or hygiene in Palamu some 2 or 3 years ago but with invasive publicity of sanitary napkins of all prices on TV screens, a celluloid film Pad Man starring Akshay Kumar and others and assured distribution of sanitary napkins amongst the poor girls and women here in the lockdown there is found a kind of openness to talk about intimate hygiene and its benefits for health.
DC Ranjan in his address to this gathering said intimate hygiene should not be seen as any taboo and no girl or woman should have any inhibition about it as this is a pure phenomenon of Nature.
Ranjan touched another core issue of the widening gap of male female ratio in Palamu where the gender ratio here is far below the national average. DC said the average national gender ratio is 949 women per 1,000 men but here in Palamu it is 929 women per 1,000 men.
“People here are unmindful of its long-range impact. I advise them to look towards Haryana and Punjab states where for dismal gender ratio in these two states marriage has become a task more than a celebration,” the DC said.
In the same vein DC said the gender ratio here in urban areas is far less again than the rural areas which is a matter of great concern.
When DC’s attention was drawn to abandonment of new born girl child in bushes, shrubs, road sides etc by their parents who refuse to own and bring up their own child just because of the child being a girl here at least one or two cases every month the DC looked pensive and said, “We all have to work to get it stopped.”
