When we talk about cleanliness, sanitation, and the need to make India free from open defecation and manual scavenging (that is, cleaning of human excreta with bare hands), the name of Mahatma Gandhi surfaces in our mind. It is because Gandhi set a personal example of cleanliness throughout his life, and he regularly and passionately wrote articles on sanitation.
Gandhi walked the talk
In 1901, when he came to India from South Africa to attend the Congress annual conference in Calcutta (now Kolkata), he did not allow the scavengers to clean the makeshift toilets, instead he himself took a broom, a shovel and a trowel, and cleaned the toilets. As Gandhi took the lead in cleaning the place and toilets, the Congress volunteers followed him. While leading the fight for the country’s freedom, he would insist that people should clean their own home and toilet, and give up the practice of engaging untouchables to do such drudgery. He also asked fellow Indians to use trench latrines as far as possible to stop manual scavenging, and he wanted that the bucket toilets (which had to be cleaned by the untouchables), should be converted into sanitary toilets. The Mahatma thus had a wish to end manual scavenging and make India clean even before the Independence of the country. After Gandhi, many attempts were made by the Government and social organisations to solve these problems, but they could not find effective solutions.
I joined the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee in 1968, as I was inspired by the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi. I would like to briefly narrate two incidents to make my point. While I was a child, I touched an ‘untouchable’ woman, and for that my grandmother forced me to swallow a mixture of cow dung and cow urine, and bathed me in the Ganga water in the chilly winter to purify me. After joining the Centenary Committee, I was living in a colony of untouchables in Bettiah town in Bihar, and here I encountered an accident in which a boy wearing red shirt was attacked by a bull. The people rushed to save him but somebody shouted from the crowd that he was from the untouchables’ colony, and the people left him in the injured state. We took him to the hospital, but the boy died.
At that point, I took a vow to fulfill Gandhi’s dream of sanitation and liberation of manual scavengers. To cut a long story short, I strove and invented the technology of two-pit pour-flush ecological compost toilet, popularly known as Sulabh Shauchalaya. Had I not invented this technology, there was no chance of ending the practice of open defecation and manual scavenging. This technology facilitated conversions of the bucket toilets into sanitary ones, and emancipation of the scavengers from the odious job of cleaning nightsoil. This technology paved the way for women getting easy access to toilet, girls going to school, and children being saved from diseases like diarrhoea and dysentery.
Today, my endeavour is to work as a bridge between Mahatma Gandhi and the Hon’ble Prime Minister Narendra Modi. After Gandhi, the present Prime Minister is the first national leader who has seriously taken up the cause of making India clean and free from open defecation. He announced from the Red Fort on 15 August 2014, that India should be free from open defecation by 2019. He himself took the broom in his hand and cleaned dirty places in Delhi; he also cleaned the Assi Ghat in Varanasi and that place has now become a place of attraction for locals and tourists.
Nothing is impossible
No doubt, to make India open-defecation-free (ODF) is a herculean task, but it is not impossible. To achieve this goal, we have to construct nearly 12 crore toilets. As I have explained on many occasions, India has 686 districts, 6849 blocks, 2.51 lakh panchayats and 6.46 lakh villages. So to create the infrastructure to achieve the target, one youngster from each panchayat will have to be trained in motivation, education, implementation, maintenance and follow-up, and that youngster will work as a change agent. We have named him a Sulabh Fellow and this change-maker with the help of two masons and four labourers can construct 20 toilets in a month, 240 in a year and in three years 720 toilets. One change-maker in one panchayat can build 720 toilets, so if 2.51 lakh panchayats can opt for this, they can build 180 million toilets. We require about 120 million toilets, so even if the performance or speed of work is less than expected, even then we can easily construct 120 million toilets in three years.
The cost of a good quality toilet is roughly Rs. 30,000. The Government of India is giving Rs. 12,000 at present as subsidy, and rest of the amount can be given by the banks as interest-free loan to be recovered in easy installments. Better still, the Government should enhance the subsidy to ` 25,000 and the bank should give ` 5,000 as a loan to the beneficiary. I am suggesting some loan to prevent the misuse of money: If the amount is less than 100% subsidy, there is lesser chance of misuse of money.
There is another option. We have 16,057 companies with a net profit of more than Rs. 500 crore, and we have 1,000 companies whose profits are more than Rs. 10,000 crore. So if these companies are persuaded to take responsibility of making one district open-defecation-free, they can provide the money for the construction of toilets in the district. The Bharti Foundation of the Airtel Company is doing this for the district of Ludhiana in Punjab. There is no reason why other rich companies cannot do this for all the 686 districts of India. Yet another option is that the Government reaches out to the Non-Resident Indians, who are about 20 million in the world, and persuade them to give money to build toilets. If this happens, we can build 120 million toilets within the stipulated three years.
I would like to suggest that the amount should be given to the beneficiaries by the banks to save the misuse of money, and prevent the possible problems between the Central and State governments.
However, there should be only one nodal NGO at the national level to monitor the progress of work by various Government agencies. The Government can help generate resource mobilisation, monitoring and supervision, but the motivation, education, communication, training, designing, estimation, implementation, maintenance and follow-up should be done by NGOs at the apex level. They will ensure that the change agent at the panchayat level effectively works as a link between the banks and the beneficiaries, and get the toilets constructed. The change agents will also follow-up for two years to ensure that the toilets are functioning well and being used properly by the people. If a toilet has some problem, it will be the responsibility of the change maker to rectify it. If we are able to take this course, I think that within three years, the dream of the Prime Minister Modi to make India open-defecation-free by 2019, can be realised.