Taking a cue from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day speech, Sulabh International on Sunday kick-started its nationwide ‘Toilet for Every House’ campaign from Katra Sadatganj village in Badaun that has been in the news for the killing of two girls when they ventured out of their homes in the dark to relieve themselves.
Terming the entire campaign a tribute by the leading sanitation NGO to the two cousins whose bodies were found hanging from a tree in their village, Sulabh founder Bindeshwar Pathak said: “Absence of toilets in houses, particularly in rural areas, is behind such incidents of rapes and sexual assaults in villages … I hope this campaign will exhort corporate houses and big organisations to come forward and adopt villages and build toilets in each household.”
After the gruesome killings of the two sisters in May this year, Sulabh International adopted the village and built 108 toilets, covering every house in the village that now has Sulabh’s unique and low-cost toilet. “This campaign is the most fitting tribute to the girls whose death triggered a national debate on women’s right to safe toilets. I hope the government wakes up to this mammoth challenge and starts building toilets in each household on a war-footing,” said Dr. Pathak.
Quoting U.N. figures, he said of India’s over 1.2 billion population, only 665 million had access to toilets. “A U.N. study in 2010 found that more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet … It’s a shame. For the first time , the issue of toilet attained such an importance in the speech of any Prime Minister from the ramparts of Red Fort. So, I am confident that now everyone will have access to toilets in not too distant a future.”
