Less than 10 km from Aurangabad lies Pokhari, a village of 260 families and a population of about 1,300. On the Swachh Bharat Mission record, it is Open Defecation Free. On the ground, it is not.
Beyond the brightly painted panchayat office and the Zilla Parishad school with clean toilets for boys and girls, it is a different story.
The nearby slum is behind the school wall and daily wagers live there. Some 47 families in this squalid locality say they continue to defecate in the open. Community toilets were built, but now their locks have tell-tale rust.
The Prime Minister’s flagship Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) has hit an invisible challenge here. Pokhari has two parts — a clean area of land owners and rich farmers with en suite toilets, and hutments of SC/ST daily wagers who go out in the open.
“They (the rich) got toilets, we don’t have them. What will we eat if we spend money on a toilet,” asks Mangal Rajesh Ghadge, a mother of three who has dug a pit where a toilet is to come up.
“We have dug pits, but do not have the money to build. We can get the government grant of Rs. 12,000 only if we construct it,” says Alka Raosaheb Barade. Until May 17, when the Maharashtra government included the so-called “encroachers,” they were totally excluded, as the SBM does not provide grant to those on government land. Yet, some houses are ‘pucca’ (permanent), and villagers have Aadhar cards and voter IDs. The SBM app lists households that have toilets, and says the village is free of open defecation. But how is it a model when at least a fourth of the population goes out into the fields? The government’s formula makes that possible.
“As per the scheme, 90 per cent of households should have individual toilets. In Pokhari’s case, most households do. Also, there are 12 community toilets for households not accounted for,” says Vaishali Jagtap, a zilla parishad official.
Despite the amended order, it will be a long wait before the names of these families appear online for SBM funding, and the sanitation barrier is broken.
