Popularising The Act Of Necessary Sanitation

A couple of years ago, The Prime Minister Narendra Modi emphasised the need for adequate sanitation in India is his Republic Day speech. The then Union rural development minister, Jairam Ramesh said that India is one of the filthiest countries in the world. After spending Rs 19,626 crore in last 10 years on Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), a large population of India is still defecating out in open. This is what a study of UN University says:
“India’s mobile subscribers totaled 563.73 million at the last count, enough to serve nearly half of the country’s 1.2 billion population. But just 366 million people — around a third of the population (31%) — had access to proper sanitation in 2008, said the study published by the United Nations University, a UN think-tank.”

The situation is no better today. 27% of India does not have access to toilets. Government measures the success of TSC on input parameters – which is the number of toilets constructed. Not on ‘how many people are using it’ or how many people have ended open defecation. Experts believe that on the usage basis still more than 60-70% of India, defecates in open.

Five years ago, India was responsible for 60% of the world’s open defecation. This is an issue mainly in the rural areas. India has a huge population and a major lack of accessible toilets, especially in public spaces. In rural areas, people often go to remote fields to relieve themselves—separate for men and women.

Access to sanitation has attracted more attention in India over the past few years after the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission. Launched in 2014, this project seeks to make the country free of open defecation by 2019. The effort follows the supreme court of India which recognised sanitation as a fundamental right in the 1990s, and the UN general assembly more recently recognised sanitation as a distinct human right.

The major progress the issue has witnessed in access to sanitation over the past few years is a first step forward. It needs to be linked to a series of other actions and an awareness of the social and cultural dimensions of sanitation inorder to achieve full success.

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Regards,
The CSR Journal Team
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