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Toilet parliaments show the way in Firozabad
The Firozabad district administration has come up with the idea of a ‘toilet democracy’ to end open defecation in the district.
The Firozabad district administration has come up with the idea of a’toilet democracy’ to end open defecation in the district.
It set the ball rolling with ‘toilet parliament’ that began in a village in August last year and is now spreading across the district.
Each toilet parliament comprises villagers who have personal or government toilets.
The village head, the village secretary, the school headmasters, the sanitary workers, accredited social health activists (ASHAs), Anganwadi, Auxiliary Nurse Midwife (ANM) and retired government employees work collectively and voluntarily to encourage villagers to construct and use toilets.
Those who do not defecate in the open and have household toilets can be change agents to make the village open defecation free by inspiring or shaming those who are not ashamed to relieve themselves in the open.
The members act as cleanliness or sanitation ambassadors, promoting cleanliness beyond toilets. Every week, the members organise a drive to clean the village. Members cooperate with ANM, anganwadi, Asha and government officials to deal with malnourishment and help pregnant women become healthy.
This concept of ‘village toilet self-governance’ introduced by the Firozabad district administration aims to first saturate the district with household and public toilets and then ensure automatic, long-term sustainability.
“We have to keep up the war on open defecation in different ways,” says district magistrate Neha Sharma.
The Individual Household Latrine (IHL) coverage in this western UP district is 44.09%.
Sharma also says: “Adding this new concept of toilet parliament to the conventional plan, we aim attain 100% coverage by October 2 instead of the original deadline of December 2018”.
Quite often, toilets become defunct soon after construction because ODF implementation is largely about construction of latrines and has largely overlooked the sustainability factor. Soon, doors go missing or water supply fails. The toilets lack any post-construction long-term day-to-day maintenance.
Chief development officer (CDO) Ashok Kumar says: “The toilet parliament takes care of this. We will exit after construction of toilets, but toilet self-governance will keep them sustainable. It will ensure that people don’t avoid using it and, at the same time, maintain them as their cherished property.”
Toilet parliament or ‘toilet sansad’ in Hindi is the brainchild of Prabhat Misra, assistant director, National Savings, Firozabad. The district administration tasked him with making five villages in Mohammedpur block open defecation free (ODF).
“I wondered how to go about it. Then I thought about making the villagers the stakeholders. I experimented with the model in Mohammedpur Nadayi village in Madanpur block. It worked. I discussed the results and the success story of the village with the district magistrate and the CDO. The district magistrate liked the idea and issued the order to implement toilet parliament across the district,” said Misra.
He was given additional charge of block development officer for Shikohabad in October. He began replicating the model in Shikohabad. Now, all the gram panchayats of Shikhobad have this village toilet self-government.
The CDO said: “Soon, all the 669 gram panchayats in all the nine blocks of the district will have the toilet parliaments to make the best use of government grants to build toilets and then sustain the toilets themselves.”
District panchayat raj officer Girish Chandra is the nodal officer for activities of the toilet parliaments.
Shikohabad is the first block to have toilet parliament in all panchayats and the district is poised to become the first one in the entire country to have this kind of village toilet self-governance.
