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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Where Will The Girls Go? -Archana Mishra

Where Will The Girls Go? -Archana Mishra

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published Published on Aug 13, 2015   modified Modified on Aug 13, 2015
-Tehelka

Last year’s Red Fort rhetoric has not been matched by action on the ground, with separate toilets for students remaining elusive as ever

One part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Independence Day this year can safely be predicted: the reeling out of statistics to prove that the Swachh Bharat campaign is sweeping the nation. The cleanliness drive launched on 2 October, 2014, was announced from the ramparts of the Red Fort on the occasion of the 68th Independence Day last year by the new incumbent at 7, Race Course Road.

As Modi had said then with his usual flourish: “The poor need respect and it begins with cleanliness…I want to make a beginning today itself and that is — all schools in the country should have toilets with separate toilets for girls. Only then our daughters will not be compelled to leave school midway.”

In tones ringing with sincerity, he talked of the great need for separate toilets for boys and girls in all government schools, assuring the country that the changes will be visible by 15 August.

One year down the line, the changes are not spectacular. Only a slight ripple can be detected, that too as intent, not action.

An important component of the move to a cleaner India is supposed to be Swachh Bharat, Swachh Vidalaya (Clean India: Clean Schools), which aims to ensure every school in the country has a set of functioning and well-maintained water, sanitation and hygiene facilities. The national campaign is supposed to play a crucial role in determining the percentage of girls staying in school at secondary level.

The Ministry of Urban Development has put out only generalised figures: a total of 3.83 lakh individual household toilets and 17,411 community and public toilets have been constructed. But a search for the number of school toilets added in the last 10 months is like a wild goose chase: neither the government departments nor the social sector have a clue.

One has to make do with numbers relating to decadal growth, that too before the nda came to power. As per a survey conducted by National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA), 2013-14, the number of schools having separate toilet facilities for girls increased from 0.4 million (37 percent) in 2005-06 to almost one million in 2013-14 (91 percent).

This might be true on paper but according to surveys: where toilets exist; they are clogged, facilities are in disuse, disposal practices are appalling and maintenance is poor. States like Uttar Pradesh boast of almost 96 percent functional toilets! If these figures can be relied upon, then why are girls in rural areas reluctant to continue their education?

According to a source in the Unicef, the NUEPA figures cannot be taken seriously. “We don’t have validated real-time data which can show if these toilets are operational or functional. Secondly, if these toilets are ill-maintained, it means that the right amount of budget is not being allocated. The issue of concern in rural schools is the unavailability of water in toilets, which needs to be addressed,” says the source.

Since updated figures related to the number of toilets in schools are not available, one can try to look at circumstantial evidence. Has there been any increase in the enrolment of girls in secondary schools? It is well known that girls are often forced to quit studies midway due to poor conditions of school toilets. Has there been any decline in the rate of diarrhoeal diseases which are largely caused due to open defecation? Have community and public toilets given women enough privacy and proper sanitation facilities required at the time of menstruation? No answers are forthcoming.

The success or failure of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan will hinge on these factors. The cleanliness initiative is basically old slime in new manholes. In 1986, the then prime minister Rajiv Gandhi launched the Central Rural Sanitation Programme. In 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee took it up a notch with the Complete Sanitation Campaign. Then the Manmohan Singh government flagged off the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan. This has been restructured by the Modi government to focus on flush systems, ending open defecation and manual scavenging, solid waste management and creating awareness to bring behavioural changes.

The latter did work, initially. A wave of enthusiasm was set off when Modi himself picked up the broom in Delhi’s Valmiki Basti and cleaned a street on 2 October, 2014. Hundred of citizens got involved, with urban groups doing makeovers of street corners and local markets.

However, government habits die hard. Thanks to the contractor raj, there is a rush for construction of new toilets but no enthusiasm for the maintenance of existing ones. As a source in the Ministry of Human Resources and Development tells Tehelka, the government is actually “tightfisted” in releasing funds for the operation of school toilets. Till February, funds had been generated only for 52 percent of dysfunctional toilets, which number 84,619.

The challenges are formidable: funds crunch, weak management and water scarcity. It is also expected that poor quality of construction and low compliance with norms will soon be revealed.

It is not just girls in their teens who suffer, menstruating women as a category need special attention, as highlighted in a survey conducted by the Society for Community Organisation and People’s Education (scope) in Tiruchirapalli, Tamil Nadu.

The survey of 40 low income women in the age-group 18-45 years found that they face a taboo in using community taps during their monthly cycle. During their periods, the women have to go down to the river, where there is no privacy, to wash up. The culture of wet cleaning puts them at a disadvantage. Besides, the women raised concerns about safety, especially for unmarried girls, time constraints, lack of disposal systems and poor accessibility.

Not just in this community, all over the country, menstrual cloth is flushed down toilets due to ignorance. As women shift from biodegradable cloth to non-biodegradable products, the impact of blockage will be exacerbated without proper disposal mechanisms. Proper monitoring has to be done to ensure the success of community toilets, similar to those in posh urban buildings.

For ‘Bharat’ to really clean up its act, a major overhaul has to be done. “We are talking about solid waste management in urban areas but there is no clarification about guidelines of sanitation and solid waste management in rural areas or urban slums,” says Sushmita Malaviya, a member of the ngo, path. “We need to develop national guidelines, budget, information or tools for appropriate menstrual waste disposal.”

The primary challenge for shared utilities is that no individual bears personal responsibility for ensuring that the system is properly used and correctly maintained. Even in household toilets, when soakage pits and chambers fill up or pipes are blocked, lack of funds may mean long periods of dysfunctionality. Similar problems plague school toilets.

The administration claims it will invest 52,000 crore over the next four years for the implementation of the cleanliness drive. A Swachh Bharat Kosh (SBK) was set up to channel funds through corporate social responsibility (CSI) under the amended Companies Act 2013. Under this initiative, funds for all 2.57 lakh toilets have been committed. As of February 2015, 58 percent of funds are yet to come from state schemes, 41 percent from PSUs and one percent from private companies.

Given that cleanliness can be a matter of life and death, the successful implementation of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan is a matter of concern even for the government. “Nearly 80 percent of the diseases in India are waterborne or through water contamination, hence it is imperative to adopt sanitation programmes,” noted Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu during the World Toilet Summit held this year,

Easier said than done, as the prime minister must be discovering. Probably, the public will have to wait longer — till 2019 — to judge whether the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan was a solid initiative or just a hot air balloon.

Tehelka Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 33, 15 August, 2015, http://www.tehelka.com/2015/08/where-will-the-girls-go/?singlepage=1


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