Build toilets to tackle rape: Sulabh founder to Modi

A file picture of Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Founder of Sulabh International. Photo: Sandeep Saxena.

Founder of Sulabh sanitation movement Bindeshwar Pathak on Tuesday said he would write to Prime Minister Narendra Modi explaining how rapes could be controlled by building toilets for women who make themselves vulnerable to attacks by defecating in the open.

“This is the only measure as if they do not have toilets in the home and they have to go outside, even at night. If toilets are going to be built then our women would be more safe,” Mr. Pathak told reporters in Kolkata.

Pointing out the recent

>gangrape and murder of two teenage girls in Uttar Pradesh’s Badaun where the incident happened when they went to attend to the call of nature in the open, he said he will explain this to Mr. Modi in a letter soon.

The eminent social reformer, who was here to attend a hygiene conference by the Institution of Public Health Engineers, said he would also appeal to the PM to increase government funds meant for sanitation.

“The funds allocated at present are not at all adequate. I would request him to end open defecation in the country in the next five years,” Mr. Pathak said while recalling that before becoming the PM Modi had coined the slogan “toilet first, temple later”.

He said he is ready to offer advice and all other kind of support which the government needs to build toilets.

Dr Pathak’s ‘Sulabh’ model of toilets has already created a mini-revolution in sanitation in the country for which he was won a number of awards including ‘Padma Bhushan’ and the Stockholm Water Prize.

“Many girls don’t go to school because they have no toilets meant for them. There are around 50 diseases which are caused to poor sanitary practises. All this can be eliminated,” he said.