She Asked Her Grandma A Simple Question About Periods & It Changed Lakhs of Lives

When Lakshmi Murthy was a teenager, her grandmother handed her a list of rules to follow during her periods. In a quiet act of rebellion, she sat on her grandmother’s lap and smiled, “Will you have to take a bath again now?”

That moment, simple yet profound, was the spark. Born in an orthodox family from Karnataka, Lakshmi grew up in the company of her widowed grandmother, who was just 21 when she lost her husband in 1930. Her strict beliefs around purity and menstruation left a lasting impression on Lakshmi.

“My anxieties about menstruation stemmed from my interaction with her. The fact that it was a taboo issue disturbed me. I carried that discomfort through adolescence — and it eventually became the reason I began working to fight taboos and raise awareness,” she says.

Today, at 64, Lakshmi — fondly known as ‘Pad Grandma’ — is a pioneer in the field of sustainable menstruation, whose work has touched countless lives across rural India. Her decades-long efforts were recently recognised when she received the prestigious ‘Pride of NID’ award from President Droupadi Murmu at her alma mater, the National Institute of Design (NID), Ahmedabad.

She thought she’d make pots

Lakshmi's journey into design was itself an act of defiance. After her family moved to Mumbai, she spent her high school and junior college years fighting to wear trousers, keep short hair — and eventually, to join NID. “My mother opposed it because it was only a diploma course back then,” she recalls.

At NID, she studied industrial design, specialising in ceramic design. Here, she also met her late husband — a Rajasthani agricultural engineer who came to NID to study design for agriculture — and after graduation in 1986, moved to Udaipur.

“There were many challenges. Connectivity was poor — we only had metre gauge trains to Ahmedabad and Delhi, and just one flight to Mumbai and one to Delhi. Apart from that, there was the prevalent patriarchy. People called me bhabhiji, didi, or Lakshmiji. They didn’t understand my work. My attire was very different from the locals. I wore trousers and shirts in a place where women wore saris with goonghats (veils),” she shares.

Her liberal in-laws, especially her mother-in-law, who worked in education, were a blessing. But the lack of ceramic design opportunities in Udaipur meant she had to carve a new path. She began organising artist camps, helping potters and artisans create new products, and soon started working with the NGO Seva Mandir, designing visual communication tools for rural communities. “I could have moved back to Ahmedabad and pursued ceramics, but at the time, having a long-distance marriage just wasn’t considered acceptable,” she adds.

Sketching periods into the picture

Lakshmi’s first real brush with menstrual health came while developing training materials for non-literate communities. She realised the visuals she was drawing didn’t resonate with people. “Those who haven’t been to school have a completely different way of drawing. So, I created a picture dictionary on how menstruation, abortion, and delivery should be depicted. That became the basis for our training manuals,” she explains.

In 2000, she received the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship to create reproductive health material for rural adolescents, and in 2001, she co-founded the NGO ‘Jatan Sansthan’ with Dr Kailash Brijwasi. Her focus on menstrual health deepened during this time, especially around the need for safe, sustainable products.

“I initially designed a simple washable cloth napkin — a ‘nada wala’ pad (a pad with cloth ties or strings) — for girls who didn’t wear underwear. It could be stitched from old petticoats or saris,” she says. But when rural women began shifting to underwear by the late 2000s, her original design quietly faded away. “My first pad died a quiet death once women started using underwear.”

Around the same time, women in villages began using the ‘lal kapda’ — a woollen felt fabric which could be washed and reused for about three months until it wore out. But it was uncomfortable. “I was very troubled,” she adds.

As Lakshmi searched for better alternatives, the larger menstrual health space was also shifting. Arunachalam Muruganantham, now widely known as ‘Padman’, began developing affordable disposable pads. Meanwhile, the menstrual cup — marketed as the ‘She Cup’ — was gaining attention in urban circles. But Lakshmi remained cautious. “I was not very comfortable with the menstrual cup for my rural adolescents. The wearer has to learn how to place and wear it. If they have medical issues, there is no access to gynaecologists in rural areas. So, Jatan Sansthan has not promoted menstrual cups.”

A design meant to be copied?

It was this concern that led to Project Uger in 2011. ‘Uger’ — which means ‘new beginning’ in Mewari — introduced one of the country’s first reusable menstrual pads, developed by Lakshmi while pursuing her PhD at IIT Bombay.

“I was anxious to make a pad that would work for women and girls who had started wearing underwear. The Uger pad is made entirely of cotton and is biodegradable within three to four months. It has straps so you can fix any cloth inside. A set of six costs Rs 180 and lasts three months. The insert cloth is extra,” she explains.

The pad is not leak-proof — intentionally so. “We took a conscious decision not to coat it with polymers in the interest of the environment,” she adds.

Project Uger garnered national and international recognition and is now being replicated across the country. In an unusual but powerful move, Lakshmi chose not to copyright the Uger design. “Many Self-Help Groups (SHGs) have copied the pad. We helped four SHGs in Northeast India set up units to make it. The Aditya Birla Group runs a unit in Jalna, Maharashtra. Mitu Foundation in Bengaluru is making it too.”

The pad was intentionally kept in the “Copy Left” space, a decision that allowed anyone to replicate the design without legal restriction. “This was a conscious choice to ensure the product reached as many people as possible, without commercial barriers,” Lakshmi notes.

Initially, the centre operated through a decentralised model. “We had robust production. We had 10 women working from home. They would come to the centre to pick up the materials, stitch the pads at home and come back to deliver them,” she recalls. 

But over time, as more players entered the market and disposable pads flooded rural areas, production dwindled. “The sadness for me comes from the fact that free disposable pads were supplied in schools across Rajasthan. On one hand, I understand it is a rights and convenience issue. But on the other hand, it is a huge environmental issue. In rural areas, there is no proper disposal system. They just lie around and end up in landfills. Even so-called compostable pads are not fully compostable,” she laments.

What period work really takes

In the past five years alone, Uger and Jatan Sansthan have reached over 1,05,000 individuals, including more than 10,000 boys and young men, by working with 75 organisations across India. Their training modules — also designed in the copy left spirit — have enabled numerous SHGs to produce and distribute pads independently.

During COVID, in collaboration with WaterAid, Jatan trained 78,753 frontline workers in Madhya Pradesh — all of them learning to stitch their own Uger cloth pads remotely from home. In Jharkhand, cloth pad production units were established in the Simdega and Jamutara districts under the National Urban Livelihood Mission.

Lakshmi and Kailash also trained over 800 ASHA workers through a 40-day intensive programme. “I handled reproductive health — contraception, abortion, communicable diseases, menstrual hygiene and more. Kailash focused on life skills. We covered everything that affects women from birth to death,” she says.

From setting up production centres in the Northeast to working with Tata Trusts in Rajasthan, Lakshmi’s team has supported rural entrepreneurs — five of whom have already sold over 8,000 pads. In partnership with Spark Minda, they also conducted menstrual health training in 14 prisons across Haryana and Uttarakhand, reaching 800 incarcerated women.

And in 2024–25, they helped set up a pad production unit through the Aditya Birla Foundation, which has already manufactured over 10,000 Uger pads in Jalna, Maharashtra.

She also helped design the UNICEF-backed ‘Positive Masculinity’ programme, where boys learned about menstruation, cooked meals, and invited family members to break gender stereotypes. “We wanted boys to understand the changes in the female body. It was very powerful,” she says.

Starting a PhD at 50

In her 50s, Lakshmi received an unexpected opportunity — an official letter from NID equating her diploma to a post-graduate degree, making her eligible for a PhD. She enrolled at IIT Bombay and completed her thesis over eight years, even as she navigated personal loss and family responsibilities. “I lost my husband. My daughter got married and had a child. I had to help her. But I kept going,” she says.

Her PhD focused on the sustainability of menstrual management, applying what she calls the PASS model — Paryavaran (Environment), Arthik (Economics), Swasthya (Health), and Samaj (Society) — to assess menstrual products holistically. “A menstrual product has to be sustainable and viable from these four angles,” she explains.

Over the years, Lakshmi’s work has gone global. Her NGO, Jatan Sansthan, and her studio, Vikalpdesign, have welcomed design students from across the country for rural immersion programmes. These students go to the fields, sketch, analyse what they’ve seen, and compare it with their own lives.

Vikalpdesign has grown into a creative space where designers and artists from leading institutes learn to collaborate with rural communities, especially women and adolescents, to co-create meaningful visual tools around reproductive health, nutrition, gender, and more. Her visual content is now used by educators and NGOs worldwide.

When the world finally took notice

Lakshmi’s contributions have been widely recognised:

• ‘Pride of NID’ Award (2024)
  
• ‘Women of Substance Award’ by Aravali Foundation, Udaipur (2022)
  
• Accor Hospitality, France ‘Take Off Challenge’ Award (2021)
  
• Goonj Award: For keeping Uger in the “Copy Left” Space (2019)
  
• Pune Innovation Centre (PIC) Social Innovation Recognition (2018)
  
• Australia CSC Meritorious Commendation Award – Centre for Communication and Social Change, University of Queensland (2009)
  

Her friend and colleague, Smriti Kedia, sums it up best: “Lakshmi’s work has been path-breaking. She applied design to communicate the most complex subjects — menstrual health, gender, reproductive rights — to non-literate communities. Her contributions have gone beyond borders.”

“Her design approach has attracted designers and artists from premium institutes to her studio, Vikalpdesign, and her organisation, Jatan Sansthan, where she helped them learn and collaborate with rural women, adolescents, and communities to create informed and meaningful design,” Smriti adds.

Today, Lakshmi lives with her 91-year-old mother, daughter, and grandson. She’s taken up ceramics again and is part of a book club. Reflecting on the future of menstrual health, she says, “Many young people are doing tremendous work. I’m happy that the movement for sustainable menstruation is in good hands.”

For her, reusable cloth pads and menstrual cups (in urban areas) remain the best alternatives. “Disposable pads will sit in landfills for years. Period panties are becoming popular — they’re reusable, but not biodegradable. It’s like choosing between noodles and chapatis. Maggi is quick and easy, but there’s always a trade-off in life,” she says with a knowing smile.

Edited by Khushi Arora; All images courtesy Lakshmi Murthy