The Rotary Club of Madras, the third-oldest Rotary Club in India, will soon launch a sanitation programme to end open defecation. The project will focus on behavioural change brought about through community involvement, said the club’s president S. N. Srikanth, at a meeting of the club held here on Tuesday.
Mr. Srikanth said the “unglamorous” project will aim to create “a sense of disgust” among residents. It will be initiated in phases at Amarampettai, Kimalur and Panjalai villages in Gummidipoondi, and Rotary Nagar in Chennai.
On the need for the project, he said that for India to become an economic super power, fundamental issues such as ending open defecation had to be dealt with.
“It will be implemented in a professional manner and be completed during a 9.5-month period. The Tamil Nadu government is mighty receptive to the project. We will work in tandem with the government. We don’t want to just create a pilot project. By the end of the decade, our club aims to make TN open defecation-free,” he said.
Ajay Sinha, CEO, Feedback Foundation, an NGO that has worked on several sanitation projects and brought about change from within villages, said that poverty, lack of toilets and lack of water had nothing to do with open defecation.
“Though 70 per cent of rural population has access to toilets, 80 per cent of people in the villages still prefer to defecate in the open. In east Godavari area, there are rich cashew exporters who do not use toilets and instead defecate in the open,” he explained.
Meenakshi Rajagopal, commissioner of rural development and panchayat raj, said that the State was ahead in socio-economic indices and the government aimed to make it open defecation-free. “The biggest barrier is changing the mindset of the people,” she said.
