Burdwan: A ‘rosy’ solution for open defecation problem

The first day, of what the administration promises to be a daily affair until the eventual aim of making the district free of open defecation is achieved, began at the Barabani community development block. Upon reaching the area, officials split into four teams. The area, with its proximity to the Jharkhand border, is along the railway lines connecting Asansol to Dhanbad. These railway lines were the administration’s primary target.

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The measures come weeks after Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the state’s Nirmal Bangla Project was all set to become one of the models for the Centre’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Mission Nirmal Bangla is an off-shoot of the Centre’s clean India campaign and was launched by the state government in concurrence to it on October 2, 2014. The idea was to bring all existing sanitation projects under the scheme. On April 30, 2015, Nadia had become the first Indian district to earn the open defecation free (ODF) status.

While the Nirmal Bangla Project draws financial support from the plans sanctioned to states under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the state government has its own target and an administrative mechanism in place, while it has put forth a healthy competition towards cleanliness. The Burdwan district administration has been one of the first to take up the challenge of setting up their own deadline (December 2016). And their method, too, is unmatched.

“We gave each person a rose and then explained to them what we were doing and why we were doing it. No one wants to fall sick. After giving them a rose, we asked them to cover their feces with ashes and dirt. We told them that would be coming here every day and if they have toilets, they should use those instead. There were some who were old and infirm. In some cases, we covered the feces with dirt ourselves. Many said that they don’t have any space to build a toilet but when we went to their homes we found that wasn’t the case,” added Mohan.

The administration finds the “lack of will” to be a far bigger problem than the lack of funds to construct a toilet. In cases involving families below the poverty line, the government will be giving financial assistance to build toilets.

In other cases, the administration said that they are relying on convincing the families that “spending Rs 2,000 to build a toilet is far better than spending Rs 10,000 every year on medical bills”.

“There are people who have the money but haven’t constructed a toilet. There is this family whose monthly earning are Rs 20,000 and also has an additional pension coming in. The men in the family spend at least Rs 5,000 on gutkha and paan but were refusing to spend Rs 2,000 for a toilet,” Mohan said.