Rural India would banish open defecation in 10 years

[Yusuf]

MUMBAI: Union rural development Minister Jairam Ramesh on Sunday said that the rural areas of the country would be free of open defecation within a decade.

"All the 2,65,000 gram panchayats in the country will be open defecation-free in ten years," Ramesh said, speaking at a seminar here.

He agreed that Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan should be considered more than just a toilet-building programme. "It highlights the concerns about privacy, security and dignity of women," he said, and assured that the campaign would be revamped.

In the past, toilet-building programmes of governments were half-hearted endeavours, with the exception of Maharashtra where a third of the gram panchayats are "open defecation free", Ramesh said. But now even a state such as Haryana, considered to be having "a patriarchal" society, had taken up the challenge in a big way with the slogan "sauchalaya nahi to dulhan nahi" (no bride if there is no toilet), he said.

Quoting 2011 census data, the minister said 60 per cent of village households still do not have access to proper toilet facilities. He praised the success of Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh on this front, apart from that of Maharashtra.

http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/12582181.cms

 

[Yusuf]

MUMBAI: Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh Sunday called upon the bureaucracy to be more gender sensitive while constructing low cost toilet blocks in villages as it is linked to the empowerment of women.

The minister pulled up the administrative machinery across the country for half-heartedly implementing the scheme.

He said that as per Census 2011, 60 percent of village households did not have access to proper toilets and urged the need for greater "gender sensitivity" in implementing the total sanitation campaign to end defecation in the open.

Ramesh was delivering the keynote address at a two-day National Consultation on Gender Empowerment, organised by the Univeristy of Mumbai and UN Women, at the varsity's Kalina Campus here.

The minister appreciated the success of the scheme in Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh and said that around 35 percent of villages in Maharashtra had also become free from open defecation.

Referring to gender empowerment, Ramesh said that it was a built-in component in most top programmes of his ministry.

"Rural roads have improved mobility of women, increased continuation of schooling by adolescent girls who now cycle on better paved roads and made delivery of health services more efficient," Ramesh said.

Ritu Dewan, professor, centre for gender economics in University of Mumbai, introduced the subject with a concept note at the two-day consultation which attracted policy makers, academics, NGOs, civil society activists and activists.

http://m.timesofindia.com/PDATOI/articleshow/12582874.cms

 

[Ray]

It will add to the requirement of additional fertilisers.

Cost of food will go up.

Organic farming will take a blow!

 

[Godless-Kafir]

It will add to the requirement of additional fertilisers.

Cost of food will go up.

Organic farming will take a blow!

Sir u mean kundie kolo fertilizer?

 

[pmaitra]

Also, raise the train fares, install bio degradable toilets on every train and keep protesters and populists politicians out of this, or inside a detention centre.

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Only totalitarian states like North Korea forbid defection.

Oh, wait...

Never mind.