December 4, 2019
Md Nadimul Haque makes a Special Mention on the need to reassess India’s ODF status
FULL TRANSCRIPT
On October 2, Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, our country was declared to be open defecation free, or ODF amid much fanfare this year.
As per data recently released by the National Statistical Office, only 71% of rural households have access to toilets. The survey was carried out between July and October, 2018. It found that States which had been declared 100% ODF before the survey began, showed significant gaps in actual access to household toilets.
Almost 42% of rural households in Jharkhand had no access to a toilet. In Tamil Nadu, the gap was 37%, while Rajasthan had a gap of 34%. In Gujarat, one of the earliest States to be declared ODF, nearly 25% of all rural households had no toilet access. The other major States listed also had significant gaps: Karnataka (30%), MP (29%), Andhra Pradesh (22%) and Maharashtra (22%).
The Government should clarify this discrepancy in NSO data and the claims by the Government.
Another cause for concern is that more than 50% of rural Indian households with toilets have septic tanks, while another 21% use single pits. In most cases, manual scavengers are employed to clean these tanks, which have resulted in their deaths. Only 10% of toilets were built with the twin leach pit system, which safely composts waste on its own without any need for cleaning or disposal.
I would urge the Government to look into this and ensure that our country achieves 100% ODF status in reality.
