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Water and Sanitation | Flush With Success -Nisha Ponthathil

Flush With Success -Nisha Ponthathil

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published Published on Mar 31, 2015   modified Modified on Mar 31, 2015
-Tehelka

Shamefully, in India, a large percentage of the population still defecates in the open. However, a village in Tamil Nadu has scripted a rare success story by becoming an Open Defecation-Free Village. Nisha Ponthathil documents how the people of Amarambedu near Chennai triumphed over habit with a little help from the civil society

Twenty-nine-year-old R Karthick, a resident of Amarambedu village, situated about 65 kilometres away from Tamil Nadu's capital Chennai, did not feel shame in doing his daily ablutions in a thicket near his home. For, it was the practice in his village.

An engineering graduate employed with the Chennai-based Poseidon Solar Private Limited, Karthick had been defecating in the open till very recently.

"It never occurred to me that I am doing something wrong and, therefore, never thought about the need of having a toilet at home," he admits.

Karthick is not an isolated case. Karthick and his family form a part of the 597 million Indians who defecate in the open. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef), India has the largest number of people defecating in the open.

The government admits it is a huge shame. Against the national average of 50 per cent, Tamil Nadu's share of the population practising open defecation, according to the latest Census figures, is 46 per cent.

A sleepy village in Thiruvallur district, Amarambedu had nothing to boast off, until recently. On 1 March 2015, a signboard reading ‘Open Defecation Free Village', which was placed at the entrance to the village, changed all that. Instantly, Amarambedu shot to fame.

At least 107 families, including Karthick's, had been practising open defecation for long, that is until the Rotary Club of Madras intervened. "Ever since the toilet has been constructed, I'm saving 20 minutes every morning," says a visibly-delighted Karthick, proudly posing for a photograph in front of his well-maintained toilet.

Initially, the villagers of Amarambedu were skeptical about the idea of constructing and using toilets, as envisaged by the Rotary Club, under the central government's Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) scheme. They were judgmental and termed it as a waste of money, energy and time. Some of them completely opposed the idea.

"We cannot afford to lose a piece of our land for constructing toilets," KN Raja, the co-chair of the sanitation committee of the Rotary Club, recalls some villagers as telling him.

Unmindful of the opposition, the Rotary Club tied up with a Gurgaon (Haryana)-based non-profit organisation named Feedback Foundation for constructing as many toilets as there were families - 107 in all.

"Building toilets alone will not solve the problem of open defecation in this country. We have to bring in the required behavioural changes in people so that sanitation becomes a priority," says Raja.

Surprisingly, most of the villagers in Amarambedu are educated, yet they do not realise the importance of building or using toilets.

Amarambedu is a small village with about 470 inhabitants, mostly Dalits (Scheduled Castes). While the elder population works as labourers earning a daily wage, many of the youths are graduates and work in the private sector.

Even after the construction of the toilets, it was not easy to convince the village folks such as S Sumathi, 59, to use them. She would confront the NGO's officials with a: "How can one defecate at the place where one eats?"

Persistent efforts by the NGO began to bear fruit when some villagers took the initiative to construct toilets. Soon, more followed and before long the NGO had succeeded in changing their mindset and making them aware of sanitation and hygiene.

"We used to take the village folks to the nearby forests to teach them the hazards of open defecation," says Rahul (who goes only by one name), who works as the project manager for Feedback Foundation and spearheads this community intervention programme. "We would dip a strand of hair in the faeces and later in a glass of water and ask them to drink it. When they would refuse, we'd say that it was no different from the food they were eating as flies carried faecal matter from the fields to their kitchens and plates. It opened up their eyes."

Rahul and his colleague Pauline Jacintha, a project associate, stay in the village to make sure that the villagers stick to their new routine, that of using the toilets and not defecate in the open as they used to.

Changing the behaviour

Since the idea of using a toilet was alien to the villagers, the process of changing their attitudes proved difficult. Although women and children readily started using the toilets, the men folk remained toilet-sceptic. In order to bring about the desired results and to make the project successful, the NGO decided to innovate.

"We organised a team of youngsters and children and equipped them with whistles and musical instruments. Every morning between 5 am and 7 am, Rahul and I would walk with them to the places used by the villagers for defecation," says Pauline.

"Some of us would blow whistles to remind the villagers to use the toilet instead of defecating in the open. On some occasions, we would impose a fine of Rs 5 on those who were resistant to change. It worked like a dream ... in a few days, most of the villagers had begun using the toilet."

With Amarambedu bagging the moniker of an ‘Open Defecation Free Village', M Murugan, a Panchayat member, is flooded with enquires from the neighbouring villages wanting to emulate their success.

Murugan, 45, holds a post-graduate degree in addition to a Bachelor's in education. Although he has a pucca house, he never built a toilet. "Now with the toilets, our village has become clean and there is no stench of faeces in the air," he says.

Amarambedu has inspired other villages to follow suit. "We are building up peer pressure," says Raja, "so that there will be little objection in the next phase of implementation of the project."

According to various studies, women and girls risk harassment and sexual abuse by defecating in the open. Also, 50 per cent of rapes in India happen due to the lack of a toilet.

For Ettiamma, 39, a labourer in Amarambedu who earns a daily wage working as a labourer, life has become easier these days. "Earlier, I used to go to the fields only two times. Over the years, I learnt to control myself, even if the necessity occurs. This created a lot of health issues for me," she says.

"As women, we need to be wary of not just snakes, dogs and other animals, but men, too. However, with the construction of the toilet, I'm very happy," she adds.

A new impetus

In spite of having a high percentage of population without toilets, India does not feature among the countries making great strides in reducing open defecation. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has sought to bring about the consciousness for sanitation and hygiene by speaking about constructing toilets, not temples. After assuming office, he pledged to make India open defecation-free by 2019 while relaunching the NBA as part of his government's Swachch Bharat Abhiyan. The Centre spends over Rs 7,000 crore per year on subsidizing the cost of constructing toilets in rural areas.

For his part, Rahul explains Feedback Foundation's approach thus: "We have adopted the Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) programme over other conventional approaches. The CLTS focuses on behavioural change and making villages open defecation-free instead of simply constructing toilets."

His project, instead of constructing toilets for villagers, encourages a community to become open defecation-free by ensuring the participation of families in constructing their own toilets.

"Apparently, their participation makes them responsible and it becomes their duty to use it and to maintain it," says Rahul.

An "Open Defecation Free State by 2015" was a high-priority goal of the current Tamil Nadu government. It had drawn up a three-year comprehensive plan and launched the scheme for the eradication of open defecation in urban areas in the year 2011-2012, with an outlay of Rs 72.60 crore. In 2012-13, a sum of Rs 50.89 crore was released to the corporations and municipalities for the improvement of existing toilets and for construction of new toilets. This scheme continued during the year 2013-14 at a cost of Rs 50 crore. Yet, the state could not achieve its goal of being an open defecation-free state.

Unhygienic conditions and lack of water are cited as some of the reasons for the failure of the government scheme. Also, most of the toilets had no roof or even walls; apparently, people could not afford the escalating price of cement and other building materials for renovating the toilet. Over time, people began to convert the toilet into a kitchen or a storage space and began defecating in the open.

Open defecation poses environmental hazards, too. The places people choose to defecate are agricultural fields, near a water source or an open drain, all of which contaminates the water and increases the incidence of water-borne diseases. Again, those who do not have access to a toilet or water to wash their hands afterwards are vulnerable to an array of faecally-transmissible and potentially deadly diseases.

More than 1,400 children die every day of diarrhoeal diseases linked to a lack of safe water and basic sanitation. Poor sanitation is one of the main causes of persistent malnutrition among children.

Mission accomplished

On 1 March 2015, the villagers of Amarambedu, Thiruvallur District Collector K Veera Raghava Rao and others took out a ‘walk for dignity' to mark the end to open defecation. The state government has reimbursed the Rotary Club for the money spent on constructing the toilets in Amarambedu. Today, all the houses in the village have a toilet which is regularly used. The Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, has evinced interest in Amarambedu's success story.

Tehelka Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 14, 4 April, 2015, http://www.tehelka.com/flush-with-success/


Tehelka Magazine, Volume 12, Issue 14, 4 April, 2015, http://www.tehelka.com/flush-with-success/


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