In India, it is a subject usually spoken about in whispers or behind closed doors. But after a social media campaign by a local politician, Bollywood stars, comedians and writers have joined thousands of people in tweeting videos of themselves urging finance minister Arun Jaitley to scrap sales taxes on sanitary towels.

The hashtag #lahukalagaan – meaning “tax on blood” – went viral in the country on Twitter this week, as citizens urged politicians to make sanitary pads more accessible to the 312 million menstruating women who still use rags during their periods.

If the campaign succeeds, India will be one of only a handful of countries, including Kenya and Canada, to stop taxing female hygiene products, which are categorised as luxury items and subject to a 12-14% tax rate in many Indian states.

The social media campaign was started by women’s rights NGO SheSays. In parliament, a parallel campaign to push for change is being led by Sushmita Dev, an Indian MP, whose online petition calling for the tax to be scrapped collected more than 200,000 signatures. Campaigners also hope to increase awareness about menstrual hygiene in rural India, where the vast majority of women still use rags.

“There are two main reasons why [women don’t use pads or tampons],” says Dev. “Access and affordability. With this campaign, I’m hoping to make pads slightly more affordable.”

A worker makes recyclable sanitary cloth napkins in Madanpur Kheri. Photograph: Saumya Khandelwal/Hindustan Times/Getty Images

Dev argues the tax on sanitary pads is fundamentally unfair. “Women bleed, it’s natural. Why should they have to pay a tax every month for it? If we can afford to make contraceptives free why can’t we scrap this?”

Her crusade began after an NGO approached Dev about obtaining funding for a single sanitary pad dispenser in Chekharcham, a remote Indian village. “That’s when I realised what a huge problem this was. That’s when I understood how many women around the country were still using cloths while menstruating. I realised how many girls weren’t going to school because of this.”

Dev’s visits to rural areas of Assam, one of India’s poorest states, also made her realise how taboo the subject of periods and pads was outside cities. “I met one young girl who thought she was going to die when she had her period. She thought her insides must be rotting away and that she had been cursed. Nobody had told her what menstruation was. That’s when it hit me, how important this is.”



The popularity of her campaign is surprising in a country where menstruation is still considered unclean, and women are still fighting for their right to enter temples and mosques while on their periods.



“Politicians are realising that women are big constituency,” says Dev. “I haven’t had any men asking why I’m raising this issue so publicly. In fact, many of my male colleagues offered to come with me and show support when I present this to the finance minister.”



India is currently undergoing its biggest tax reform since independence with the passage of the goods and services tax bill. From this year, all goods and services across the country will be part of a single, federalised system, replacing the old regime in which individual states controlled taxes. Dev sees this tax overhaul as an opportunity for women nationwide.



“We’re now in a one nation, one tax era,” says Dev. “There have been some states in India where this tax has been abolished, such as Goa and Pondicherry. But why not convince the government to scrap sales taxes on pads nationwide? This sort of thing doesn’t happen unless an MP takes it up inside parliament.”



Last month, India’s minister for women, Maneka Gandhi, wrote to the finance minister urging him to support Dev’s campaign.

“Once lower cost options are made available to women, we could consider slowly moving them towards using biodegradable pads and we could also encourage the manufacturers to shift towards them,” Gandhi said.

• This article was amended on 23 April 2017 to clarify that the NGO SheSays started the hashtag campaign and that Sushmita Dev’s campaign was separate.