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Re 1 'shame' for loo dodgers -Basant Rawat
-The Telegraph

Ahmedabad: If "pay and use" toilets can't slay the demon of open defecation, perhaps "get paid for not using" will.

So believes the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation, which plans to shame the city's dump-it-in-the-open brigade by catching them in the act every morning and paying them Re 1 on the spot.

Will this not be an incentive for the offenders to stick to the old habit rather than shed it? Civic health officer Bhavik Joshi would have none of it.

"It's about shaming," he said. "You can call it Gandhigiri if you like."

From next Monday, the civic body will send out teams of officials and male and female volunteers to 59 "nuisance spots" it has identified, Joshi said.

They will lurk around the open spaces, railway tracks and waste dumps near slums where an estimated 1,200 relieve themselves under the sky. As soon as they spot one, out will come their bag of Re 1 coins.

"The children will be paid a toffee," Joshi said.

Seeking receipts is out of the question, of course, but civic officials don't smell any possible corruption.

"The money involved is small, and the volunteers have been selected with care," an official said.

Municipality standing committee chairperson Pravin Patel said the corporation estimated about 1,200 toilet dodgers in the city.

Even assuming the drive proves a dud and each sanitation slouch lands a rupee every day, the city fathers wouldn't be poorer by much more than Rs 36,000 a month, a civic administrator calculated.

It's all official, therefore. Patel's standing committee has approved the "scheme", which a local BJP politician billed an "effective workable solution" and a leg-up for "Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Swachh Bharat drive".

Congress politician Badruddin Sheikh, leader of the Opposition in the civic board, ridiculed the scheme as "childish".

"Instead of punishing repeat offenders, they want to give them an incentive. Take it from me, this is not going to work," he said.

Senior Congress leader Ashok Panjabi cited the civic elections due in October to dub the effort "a political stunt, a gimmick to hoodwink the people".

"The BJP has been ruling for years - why has it woken up just months before the civic elections?" he asked.

But the plan has earned admirers in high places.

Jainee Gordhandas, co-chair of the Ahmedabad chapter of Young Indians, an initiative of industry chamber CII, is so impressed that she is willing to join hands with the civic body "to make the drive a success and keep the city clean".

"Our members will love to be part of such an initiative that makes a lot of sense to me. We should do everything to embarrass those who do not use public toilets and, instead, defecate in the open," she said.

A city of 74 lakh people, Ahmedabad has 314 pay-per-use and 134 free public toilets apart from 22,000 community toilets in the slum areas. The pay-per-use toilets charge Rs 2 but are free for all women and children.