No water in 60% toilets puts question mark over Modi govt’s Swachh Bharat mission

The findings have put a question mark over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious target of declaring India open-defecation free by October 2019.

Updated on: May 14, 2017, 13:06:08 IST

Hindustan Times, New Delhi | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

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Nearly six out of the ten toilets built by the government under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan don’t have proper water supply, making them unusable, a government survey has found.

The findings have put a question mark over Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious target of declaring India open-defecation free by October 2019.

A survey by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) found in 2015-16 that while the country’s sanitation infrastructure has seen a slight improvement, a lot is still left to be desired.

Since the NDA took charge in 2014, around 3.5 crore new toilets have been built using government subsidy, which is double the 2001 numbers.

The improvement in sanitation coverage was a result of the government’s decision to give a subsidy of Rs 9,000 to poor households and Rs 3,000 to others for toilet construction, with an aim to ensure that every house has a toilet by the next general elections.

The impressive infrastructure achievement, however, has its pitfalls also. Around 55.4% of people in villages are still opting for open defecation in the absence of water supply and proper drainage in the toilets, the National Sample Survey Office found in a survey of over one lakh households. In cities, 7.5% of the population defecated in the open.

The survey’s findings highlight the hygiene-related risks the limited sanitation coverage poses to the 833 million people living in villages and the 377 million residing in cities.

In the past, there have been instances of people using newly-built toilets as storerooms and kitchen in parts of Madhya Pradesh and UP in the absence of water and a proper drainage.

The survey also pointed out that the number of rural households with a toilet have increased but their percentage in cities has fallen primarily because of a rise in rural to urban migration owing to farm sector distress in the last three years.

Ramon Magsyasay awardee social activist Bezwada Wilson said the Swachh Bharat mission failed to take a note of manual scavenging. “The toilets are being built without any cleaners,” he said.

The survey found that in Assam, Punjab and Odisha no agency was appointed for cleaning even the community toilets built under the mission.

The government’s first big toilet survey found that 40% of toilets in villages were not connected to a drainage system.

In majority of these villages, the survey said, the toilet waste was being released directly into local water bodies, thereby polluting the limited water
resources.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

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