As India gradually opens towards a new normal Menstrual Hygiene has remained a huge concern. A sizeable population of girls and women continue to grapple with challenges to access safe and hygienic menstrual hygiene products, information, and sanitation facilities required to manage periods hygienically and with dignity.

The COVID 19 pandemic has created a gap in production and distribution of menstrual hygiene products.

Periods don't stop in a pandemic - but in patriarchal societies where menstruation continues to be a taboo - they can be well ignored.

Around 3.5 million barefoot women health workers are fronting India's fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. These women are known as Anganwadi and ASHA workers - community health workers who work with women and children in their villages.

Anganwadis are rural health centers established by the Indian government in 1975 to address malnutrition among women and children. There are around 2 million Anganwadi workers in our country.

When the COVID crisis broke, they were enlisted for door-to-door distribution of dry ration, awareness campaigns and screening. Along with them, the government had also pulled in the services of around a million Accredited Social Health Activists, known as ASHAs, to track returning migrants, contact tracing, reporting or accompanying suspected COVID cases to nearby medical centers. They connect some of India’s most vulnerable communities to the public health care system, which is why they are an invaluable network for the Indian government for conducting awareness campaigns and door-to-door screening especially important now as migrant workers return to their local communities from cities.

This army of semi-literate women are burdened with an inordinate amount of health care interventions and are now an important part of India’s strategy to flatten the curve of the coronavirus. But they are poorly paid, overworked and inadequately trained and protected.

Imagine a male workforce of over 3 million people working under such conditions silently? Would they have been treated this abysmally?

A conversation with author Kiran Manral on life in a COVID world.

My guest this evening is Ina Puri. She is a writer, biographer, art curator and collector and author of several books on Indian art and contemporary artists. She has been associated with the visual and performing arts, and has been curating art exhibitions in India and abroad for over three decades. In this episode she tells us how much she is missing traveling to artist studios, the smell of paint, her grand daughter Samaira who will turn one soon and the forgotten treasures jumping out at her from forgotten shelves and drawers.

Suchitra Vijayan is a New York-based lawyer, foreign policy analyst, writer, and photographer, and mum to a three year old. In this episode, she raises some pertinent questions about privilege and poverty and COVID-19, while also talking about how hard it has become for women to balance work and life against the backdrop of the pandemic lockdowns and the kind of world she wants for her daughter.

Educator, microbiologist, and environmental warrior Sue Lennox, is the co-founder of nonprofit OzGREEN and winner of the 2020 NSW Senior Australian of the Year award. In this episode Sue talks about misinformation, disinformation, how to fight it.

Check out OzGreen's new online community program "Pulse of the Pandemic".

http://www.ozgreen.org/pulse_of_the_pandemic

https://www.facebook.com/events/online/pulse-of-the-pandemic-3/726408774563277/

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I have a very special guest this evening - mah boi Che, who turns 15 today. We are under a strict lockdown in India and hence we have had to re-imagine the way we would mark the day. The dude was stuck with his parents for one - instead of in a coffee shop with his friends. But we made the best of it - some experimental cooking, lots of conversations and (bad) jokes. How are you planning to celebrate your child's birthday in lockdown?

There is no doubt whatsoever that going forward there is always going to be a pre-COVID and post-COVID world.

The Coronavirus pandemic has upset everything we have known till now. Negotiating our children’s early years, negotiating their teen years – will it be the same? Or will we have to unlearn and learn a new way of bringing them up?

What kind of psychological effect might this pandemic have on our children? Can you see any visible signs? Have you noticed any change in behavior? How are you keeping them engaged at home? Are you looking differently at their upbringing?

Maybe you now think home schooling is not such a bad idea? Or maybe you think it is the worst idea. Personally I don’t think I can do it – I do not have the patience. But I also ask myself when will I be ready to let him go back to school with confidence? Will I have to learn to let go all over again?

For those of you who are pregnant or about to give birth, what are your fears or hopes and dreams for your child? How are you preparing yourself for motherhood in a suddenly uncertain world?

Our children were born in a very different world. A world of plenty – not just in terms of our daily life but also in terms of hopes and dreams and aspirations.

But they were also born in a world that thrived on inequalities and oppression and a lopsided distribution of wealth and opportunities. But today as we face our mortality we know that pandemics do not discriminate on the basis of religion or wealth or gender. This moment in time is as frightening as it is sobering.

Are we going to learn a lesson from this and work harder at demanding equal rights for every single person on this earth, or will we go back into our privileged corners again?

I hope we fight harder for equality in the post-COVID world. I hope we are more compassionate, more tolerant, more embracing, more grateful, more mindful.

I can’t wait to connect with you and learn about your deepest fears and uncertainties and hopes for the future. This solidarity – this mommyhood – will help us negotiate this crisis better and help us build a brand new world. Is that too much to hope for? Perhaps. But hope is courage. Hope is the future.

Find me on:

Skype - nilanjanabhowmick

Email - [email protected]

Twitter - @nilanjanab

We are in this together. Come talk to me. And tag another mommy – let’s build a chain and plot for a new world together.

Remember what Nellie McClung said?

Women are going to form a chain, a greater sisterhood than the world has ever known.