Gift toilets ... from Badaun

Badaun shows many problems that rural India faces- lack of toilets is one of them. 


Katra  Shadat Ganj in Badaun district in Uttar Pradesh is approximately 293 kilometres from New Delhi. 

The remote village sits in between sprawling green and yellow agricultural land. The area is known for its mangoes. It is here, a couple of months back two teenage girls were raped and hanged to a tree, when they went out to relieve themselves in the open.

54% households (408 out of 750 households) have never had toilets in this village.   According to the government census 2011, half of India’s population (around 600 million) don’t have toilets at home.

The incident had lead to a renewed global outcry over the growing incidents of rape in India. Two months down the line, the sleepy and poverty-ridden village is witnessing a flurry of construction work.  The village is getting toilets – thanks to Sulabh international that has decided to build toilets for every household following the horrific incident.

The toilets could soon act as one of the vital life-changing agent for the villagers.  Rushina Begum, 35 years, is a mother of three daughters. The eldest daughter, Chandi is 14 years old.  For Rushina, the biggest worry is the safety of her three daughters. “There is a fear in my heart following the incident; I personally take my daughters to the field”, she says.

The new toilet in their courtyard is going to change their lives. “We are vey happy, we can’t wait to use the toilet”, says Chandi.

The Sulabh toilets are sleek, concrete structures, finished with ceramic tiles, has waterproofing cement paints and aluminium doors.

The project engineer, Ramesh Misra explains that the $ 700 toilets that Sulabh is building suit the local conditions. “The soil is sandy and has high moisture”, he says.

Sulabh International is India’s largest NGO that has been working in the field of sanitation for over four decades.  Its founder Dr Bindeshwar Pathak pioneered a two- pit technology that is affordable, culturally acceptable and can be easily built under any conditions.  The technology can be further used to harness biogas and produce fertilizer from human excreta.

Sulabh expanded the concept of public toilets in India. Today, it maintains 8000 public toilets and constructed over1.3 million household toilets. Its ground-breaking innovation is seen as one of the biggest social movements in contemporary India. 

Sulabh, under the leadership of Dr Bindesheswar Pathak has a vision to provide toilets for every household by 2019, something shared by the newly elected prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, who during the election campaign echoed “ toilets first, temples later.”

However, dealing with India’s sanitation problem will require challenging the mind-set and changing social habits.

Dr Pathak says, “not having toilets in not directly linked with poverty. Lack of education for a vast majority of population means that people don’t have basic sense of sanitation, healthcare and hygiene.”

It’s true: across north India, where the problem of open defecation is rampant, some villagers have concrete and even big houses but the men running the household don’t feel that toilet is necessary.

Getting every household to use toilets will require motivation at one level, but more importantly this shameful habit speaks volumes how miserably India  has failed to educate its population.