‘Wife-Swapping Case' by Naval Officers to be Heard in Supreme Court of India

This time men in uniform are rocking in the news for the wrong reasons. Insiders can never deny the fact that the current allegation of wife swapping could have been in practice among the armed force officers. But seldom had the reality come into light in media or in open.

This episode also could have been buried if this woman would have fallen into the line of armed force officers party’s practices. But she chose to blow the whistle.

The Supreme court of India will hear the plea of the woman along with her other petition on restraining the Kerala High Court from giving any relief to the accused in the case

The Supreme Court on Friday agreed to hear the plea of a naval officer's wife seeking a CBI inquiry against her husband and other officers of Southern Naval Command in Kochi for allegedly torturing her and forcing her to participate in "wife-swapping" parties.

A bench headed by Chief Justice P Sathasivam said that it would hear the plea of the woman along with her other petition on restraining the Kerala high court from giving any relief to the accused in the case.

Submitting that complaint filed by her is not being investigated freely and fairly by the Kerala Police, she pleaded before the apex court that her complaint be probed by CBI.

"The local police is under a lot of pressure to treat the matter as a matrimonial dispute and are watering down the serious and grave allegations of the complaint against the naval officers," she alleged.

She gave a detailed account of the various alleged incidents of torture and molestation in her petition and also annexed the invitation cards of "wife-swapping" parties for which she was "tortured mentally and physically to participate". She submitted that she had written a letter to chief of Naval staff on March 5 but no action was taken on the complaint.

According to the news, the complainant woman is severe under pressure from armed force officers and she has been even tortured and illegal cases are built up to make her withdraw the case. Police seems to be hand in globe with armed forces and with men in uniform, because its largely a man’s world and they want to prove women has no say.

Eco-Hazard of Sanitary Pads

The disposal and recycling of sanitary pad, which is used by women for private personal hygiene, is at the center of a raging open controversy in Pune, Maharshtra. According to the estimates, the city's female population generates about 10 million used sanitary pads weighing around 140 tonnes, per month, posing a major challenge to dispose them off safely without causing health or eco-hazards. Conservancy group in Pune is now protesting against handling and disposing of sanitary pads and even baby or adult diapers which are thrown into trash bins.

For the first time in India, the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) has demanded that sanitary pad manufacturers must include an identifiable disposal bag with each sanitary pad to eliminate environmental and health hazards arising out of its disposal.  Joint Municipal Commissioner Suresh Jagtap said that in January, Mayor Vaishali Bankar and Municipal Commissioner Mahesh Pathak had invited some of the companies for a meeting to hammer out a solution. But no company representative turned up.

A non-government organisation - Solid Waste Collection and Management (SWaCH) - decided to take some direct action.  On March 8, International Women's Day, they collected bundles of used sanitary pads and returned them to the companies which manufactured them.

The move worked. Officials from some of the top companies in the business like Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, Hindustan Unilever and Kimberly Clarke Lever met the PMC authorities in April and assured a solution within three months. This would include how to dispose of the used sanitary pads, whether they should be segregated as wet or dry waste, whether the products are bio-degradable or not and whether they are recyclable or not.  But, since then three months have passed but they have not acted in the matter

In a unique public-private-partnership initiative of the PMC, SWaCH, was given a five-year contract in 2008 to collect household waste and dispose them off in a safe and environment friendly manner. Accordingly, SWaCH's 2,300 waste-picker members, including 300 men, collect all waste door-to-door from 400,000 homes, or nearly 53 percent of all Pune's houses.  The PMC pays them between Rs.10 and Rs.30 per household and the rest of the money the waste-pickers earn from disposing of the waste collected after segregating it as plastic, metal, paper, cloth, glass, biodegradable waste and the like.

However, the biggest complaint from SWaCH members is handling sanitary pads and diapers which they consider insulting as well as a major health hazard.

According to the Extended Producers Responsibility under the Plastics Management & Handling Rules, 2011, it is the manufacturers' responsibility to ensure that they are responsible for their products till the very end after they are used. It is know n that the unaware masses simply drop them in dustbins or flush them in toilets, with the risk of choking the drainage systems. A sanitary napkin comprises over 90 percent crude oil plastic and the rest is chlorine-bleached wood or cotton pulp.

The usage of sanitary pads is growing and becoming popular even in rural areas and so it was imperative for the manufacturers to evolve a solution to the looming crisis.  SWaCH has made a small beginning by manufacturing tiny, easily identifiable yellow bags with a string, sold at Re.1 per piece to some of the households they service.  They are made by retired waste-pickers who have no other source of income. We are able to supply around 20,000 per month, while the actual requirement is staggeringly high.

Incidentally, the PMC-SWaCH initiative has been supported by other NGOs like the Centre for Environment & Education, Stree Mukti Sanghatana, Parisar and Janwani, as also the state government.

A 2011 survey by AC Nielsen, "Sanitary protection: Every Woman's Health Right", revealed only a 12 percent usage of sanitary napkins in India, among the lowest in the world.

However, SWaCH estimates that the number of used sanitary pads in Pune would be around half a million a month, based on the national average. According to estimates arising from the survey, nearly 36 million Indian women use sanitary napkins every month and at an average 12 per month per woman, it amounts to 432 million weighing 9,000 tonnes. 

Considering that this is the prelude to the known problem other cities of India would be facing soon, the local government and NGO should regulate this eco-hazard on priority unless it becomes a unmanageable problem.