-Down to Earth While we near the deadline of October 2, 2019 for ODF, concerns like non-functional toilets, poor sewage and drainage systems, lack of water, and poor faecal sludge management demand immediate attention of the new government In the last five years India saw a renewed focus on sanitation with the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) which aims to provide universal sanitation coverage by providing funds for constructing toilets, promoting...
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Open defecation continues unabated
-The Hindu ‘Open defecation levels are still above 40% in ODF States; Swachh Bharat has not brought behavioural change’ New research on the impact of the Swachh Bharat Mission in the rural parts of four northern States shows that while open defecation has fallen and toilet ownership has increased, the percentage of people who owned toilets but continued to defecate in the open has remained unchanged between 2014 and 2018. This indicates...
More »Understanding the Problems of India's Sanitation Workers -Nirat Bhatnagar
-TheWire.in While no one can argue that India may moving in the right direction in terms of sanitation, all is not well. Despite increasing focus by the government and programmes such as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, unsafe sanitation work, loosely captured under the catch-all phrase manual scavenging, still exists in India. There are five million people employed in sanitation work of some sort in India with about two million of them working...
More »Modi wants open defecation-free India but his own adopted village paints a dirty picture -Ruhi Tewari
-ThePrint.in Rural Development Ministry data shows Modi’s village Nagepur in Varanasi is not open defecation-free, scores zero out of three. New Delhi: As part of his marquee Swachh Bharat initiative, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had set an ambitious target of ensuring an open defecation-free (ODF) India by October 2019. This could be a bit of a stretch because as it turns out, the PM’s own adopted village — Nagepur in his Varanasi...
More »In Several UP Villages, Toilets Exist Only on Paper -Kabir Agarwal
-TheWire.in The government claims 99% of Uttar Pradesh is open defecation free, but the ground reality shows this assertion is far from the truth. Lucknow/ Barabanki/ Meerut/ Shamli: Hetampur is a small village of about 1,200 people in central Uttar Pradesh’s Barabanki district, located 50 kilometres from the state capital Lucknow. The village has been declared open defecation free (ODF) under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin). Urmila is a resident of the...
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