India’s sanitation emergency – Al Jazeera

New Delhi promised to build hundreds of public toilets for the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Only 9 were built, and none of them are functioning. This short report from Al Jazeera’s Sohail Rahman highlights the fact that over 50 per cent of Indians have no access to clean toilets. It focuses on the lack of facilities in India’s growing cities and in schools. The report features rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, the inevitable Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh International and UNICEF India’s Suzanne Coates.

India: bride awarded US$ 10,000 for demanding toilet after marriage

Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh presents the Sulabh Sanitation Award to Anita Bai Narre. Photo: V. Sudershan / The Hindu

A young woman who sparked a “sanitation revolution” in her village by forcing her husband to build a toilet in their home has been presented with a cheque for 500,000 Rupees (US$ 10,000).

Anita Narre of Chichouli village of Betul district in Madhya Pradesh received the award from Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh, on behalf of Sulabh International.

India: Sulabh International gets top UN consultative status

The United Nations has accorded its highest consultative status to Indian sanitation NGO Sulabh International. The Chief of the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) NGO Branch, Andrei Abramov conveyed the upgrade of Sulabh International from ‘Special’ to ‘General’ consultative status in a letter to Sulabh founder Bindeshwar Pathak.

ECOSOC is the only main UN body with a formal framework for NGO participation. General consultative status is reserved for large, established international NGOs whose area of work covers most of the issues on the agenda of ECOSOC and its subsidiary bodies.

Sulabh Toilet Complex in Kabul, Afghanistan. Photo: Sulabh International.

India – Schools to get more toilets

Nov. 30, 2010 – To address the lack of sanitation facilities in girls’ schools, FICCI Ladies Organisation (FLO) has tied up with Sulabh International to provide toilets in schools. Launching the programme on Monday, FLO said it took up the initiative after surveys and government reports established the link between girls dropping out of schools due to lack of proper sanitation facilities in government as well as private schools.

As part of the project, two schools in Bhiwandi and one in Dahanu will be provided with the toilet facilities. “We are inviting applications from schools and organisations working in the sanitation sector for setting up toilets for girls in schools,” said Bela Rajan, chairperson, FLO.

FLO will fund the project, while Sulabh International Social Service Organisation will provide the infrastructure and know-how for constructing these toilets.

India: liberated women scavengers visit Parliament, meet Speaker

A new beginning: A group of liberated women scavengers during their visit to the Parliament House in New Delhi, India. Photo: R. V. Moorthy/The Hindu

It was an unforgettable moment for 300 women who used to work as manual scavengers as they entered the precincts of Parliament to get an experience of the Lok Sabha [Lower House] on Tuesday [16 August 2010] for the first time.

Treated as “untouchables” and ostracised by society for the nature of their work for decades, the women belong to a class of workers who used to manually clean human excreta.

The 300 women, who hailed from Alwar and Tonk districts of Rajasthan, have stopped working as manual scavengers now. They were received by Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar as special guests.

Engineering association lauds low-cost toilet technology of Sulabh

NEW YORK: A top American engineers’ body has recognised the low-cost toilet technology developed by Indian NGO Sulabh International to improve community health, hygiene and environment in the developing world and in the process triggerring off social reform, restoring human rights and dignity to millions of downtrodden women involved in manual scavenging.

The World Environment and Water resources Congress, organised by American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) at Providence, Rhodes Island appreciated Sulabh’s low cost sanitation technology in India and other developing countries, the NGO said in a news release.

Indian Social innovator, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, along with his team, has developed an indigenous two-pit toilet technology, which is not only cost effective but can also be used in producing biogas. Recycling and reuse of human excreta for biogas generation is an important way to get rid of health hazards.

His efforts have made a difference in life of millions of people by creating, through technology, a new culture that had restored human rights and dignity to those traditionally known as untouchable by providing a safe and hygienic human waste disposal system, says the Congress citation.

Delivering the key note speech at the Congress, Sulabh founder said that NGO will soon launch its sanitation campaign in 50 countries and appealed to technical experts to join hands with his organization to achieve United Nations’ millennium Development goal relating to sanitation and hygiene.

Sulabh International is the pioneering organization in the field of biogas generation from public toilet complexes. After a series of experiments, the organisation developed a more efficient design of biogas plant that has been approved by the Indian Ministry of Non-conventional energy.

Pathak’s toilets, the design of which he’s made available to almost all the towns of India, are used by 10 million people daily, helping push the number of people in rural India with access to a toilet from 27 percent five years ago to 59 percent today.

Sulabh technology has also been used to construct over 5,500 public-toilet complexes in cities across south and central Asia, for people who are homeless or who have no sanitation in their houses.

Source – Economic Times

Sulabh to construct low-cost toilets in Japan

New Delhi, Jan 31 (PTI) Sulabh International, a leading sanitation NGO, has decided to start its operation soon in Japan by constructing low cost toilets popularly known as “Sulabh Sauchalaya“.

The decision was taken in the light of the initiatives by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, on whose invitation Sulabh founder Bindeshwar Pathak visited Tokyo to throw light on effective methods for easy disposal of human waste.

Pathak, who also visited some rural areas of Japan, said here today that there was a need for cheap toilets as the technology in use in that country was very expensive and felt that the two-pit toilet system could be a perfect solution given the climate of Japan.

Sulabh is going to construct at least half a dozen low- cost toilets as part of its project to display the efficacy of its technology.

Source – http://www.ptinews.com/news/493551_Sulabh-to-construct-low-cost-toilets-in-Japan

Indian Sanitation Innovator & Social Reformer Awarded 2009 Stockholm Water Prize

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak. Photo: Sulabh International Social Service Organisation)

Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh Sanitation Movement in India, has been named the 2009 Stockholm Water Prize Laureate. As the Founder of the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, Dr. Pathak is known around the world for his wide ranging work in the sanitation field to improve public health, advance social progress, and improve human rights in India and other countries. His accomplishments span the fields of sanitation technology, social enterprise, and healthcare education for millions of people in his native country, serving as a model for NGO agencies and public health initiatives around the world. Since he established the Sulabh Sanitation Movement in 1970, Dr. Pathak has worked to change social attitudes toward traditional unsanitary latrine practices in slums, rural villages, and dense urban districts, and developed cost effective toilet systems that have improved daily life and health for millions of people. He has also waged an ongoing campaign to abolish the traditional practice of manual “scavenging” of human waste from bucket latrines in India while championing the rights of former scavengers and their families to economic opportunity, decent standards of living, and social dignity.

Read more: SIWI, 25 Mar 2009

India – Manual scavengers given a new lease of life

USHA Chaumar was seven years old when she began collecting human excrement with her mother in the northern Indian state of Rajasthan.

By the age of 10, she had married and, with her mother-in-law, continued going from house to house performing this demeaning task.

“They used to call me Bhangi (part of the lowest of Indian castes) and treat us badly,” says Chaumar, now 33.

She was one of the country’s estimated 700000 so-called human scavengers on the lowest rung of the social hierarchy, who for centuries have had the wretched task of cleaning toilets and collecting human excrement.

Many Indians today still treat the waste collectors as “untouchables” and don’t let them approach their villages, schools or temples or come into contact with their food and drinking water.

“If I was thirsty, they would give me water but would avoid touching me,” says Chaumar.

Five years ago, her scavenging days ended when she joined the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, a non-profit group working to improve sanitation in India and the conditions for this marginalised segment of society.

More – The Times, South Africa

India – Sulabh to expand sanitation campaign to include handwashing

New Delhi, Oct 16 (IANS) Sulabh International, an Indian NGO working in the field of sanitation, Thursday announced that it will expand the campaign for hand-washing to cover mothers, doctors and others taking care of children.

We can significantly reduce the mortality rate among children caused by diarrhoea and pneumonia if those handling children ensure that their hands are properly washed before they feed them, said Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of the NGO.

The practice of hand-washing with soap is a priority concern for the current year, which is being observed as the International Year of Sanitation by the UN, Pathak said.

Sulabh has already launched a campaign to make the people aware of the importance of washing hands, but feels there is the need for intensifying the move at a larger scale.

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