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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Rapists on prowl in loo-less rural Bihar -Madan Kumar

Rapists on prowl in loo-less rural Bihar -Madan Kumar

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published Published on Jan 19, 2013   modified Modified on Jan 19, 2013
-The Times of India

PATNA: At least 400 women and adolescent girls in Bihar would have escaped rape in 2012 had the state government provided toilets to all the households in the state under the Centre-sponsored Total Sanitation Scheme (TSC), now christened Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA). That's official - sort of.

According to police records, rape cases averaged 980-odd every year in Bihar between 2006 and 2011. In the year just gone by, 872 cases of rape were reported till November. "Roughly 40% to 45% of the incidents took place with the women when they went out of their homes to defecate in the open," Bihar police's IG (weaker sections) Arwind Pandey told TOI on Tuesday.

Pandey is not speculating without any basis. "We are collecting data on incidents of rape with women and girls when they had gone out of their homes to answer nature's call. In Kishanganj, Araria and Purnia districts, 61 rape incidents were reported between January and July last year. Of these, 26 incidents took place when the victims were out to defecate in the open," Pandey said and added the police HQ was waiting for the figures to come from the state's remaining 35 districts.

That's only the tip of the iceberg as most of such rape cases are widely believed to go unreported. "The figures will go up if a survey is commissioned and the surveyors are women," saysShantwana Bharti of Mahila Samakhya, a Bihar government's organization working for the uplift of women.

Bharti, who has been working on the issues of sanitation and women empowerment in Bihar for nearly two decades, says most of the rape cases in rural areas go unreported to police. "But at our meetings with rural women on sanitation issues, 10 among 20 participants confide in us about their rape once, twice or thrice when they were out in the field after sundown to relieve themselves," Bharti said.

Bad boys mostly target newlyweds and unmarried girls as they are more likely to suffer silently. "The newlyweds fear divorce while parents of unmarried girls are worried about their daughter's marriage prospects," Sangita Dutta, another Mahila Samakhya functionary, said.

The state government under the TSC/NBA has to provide toilets in 1.11 crore households which were found sans a toilet during the 2001 census. The state's public health engineering department (PHED) could provide toilets in only 43.75 lakh households till January 15 this year, according to the department's official website. A fresh target under the NBA based on 2011 census is yet to be fixed.

Prakash Kumar of SWASTH-WATSAN-Bihar, a state government initiative supported by the UK's DFID ( Department for International Development), says given the current pace of construction of toilets, the state may achieve 80% ODF (open defecation-free) area by 2021. PHED's chief engineer Arun Kumar Shrivastawa, who has been monitoring the NBA implementation in the state, nods. "The state will provide toilets in 100% households by 2022," he says.

The Times of India, 17 January, 2013, http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2013-01-17/patna/36392953_1_toilets-total-sanitation-scheme-nirmal-bharat-abhiyan


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