They say India is a country on the move, in a hurry to catch up with the Developed world. Our Government implements various schemes for the upliftment of Society on a regular basis and I recently came upon one such scheme which had an unexpected benefit for young girls living in Maharashtra's villages, which I would like to share with Readers on 4indianwomen. Wanting to improve sanitation by helping people to stop defecating in the open (in fields or near their homes), the State Government of Maharashtra introduced a scheme for building toilets in every single home in every village in the State. The local Self-Government bodies were empowered to distribute funds (100% for families living below the poverty-line and 50% for others) to re-imburse the cost of newly-built toilets. These toilets are pretty simple, mind you, consisting of just an enclosed space outside the house (people don't like to have them inside their homes in rural India, still) that has a toilet bowl in the ground that leads to a soakage pit. The State Government announced a further incentive in the form of a cash prize of several lakh rupees to any village that implemented this scheme in 100% households of the village. Many Village panchayats (local self-governing bodies at the village level) were so enthused by this that their members went from house-to-house to motivate people to build toilets! The overall result has been very satisfactory and the scheme has thrown up one extremely unintended result: once these toilets were built, it was found that THE ATTENDANCE OF GIRLS IN SCHOOLS HAD IMPROVED DRAMATICALLY! Why? How did this occur and how are the two connected, you will wonder. Well, it is customary for girls and women who are menstruating, to not enter the house, but to live in one room at the back of the house that is designated for this purpose. This effectively means that the girls cannot bathe during the four days of their monthly menstrual period. Being unable to bathe and clean themselves, most girls who live in families that still follow this tradition simply opt to stay away from school on these days. Now, with these newly-built toilets outside their house, they can clean and bathe themselves there.... and so they don't have to miss school anymore! THANK YOU, my Government, for your benign gesture, and here's wishing India and the Indian Woman speedy progress....a SOCIAL one too, where girls and women are not required to follow medieval customs anymore, but can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with their male counterparts, in all walks of life!