Two major corporate houses – Tata Consultancy Services and Bharti Enterprises -- on Monday pledged Rs. 100 crore each to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Independence Day call for a >‘Clean India’ campaign .
While TCS has decided to provide hygienic sanitation facilities in 10,000 schools for girl students, Bharti has adopted Ludhiana district to improve household sanitation and build new toilets in schools for girls where there are no such facilities.
In his maiden Independence Day speech on Friday, Mr. Modi had asked the corporate sector to chip in this endeavour by using funds under the Corporate Social Responsibility for building toilets in schools so that all government schools have sanitation facilities by August 15 next year.
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As per all government and non-government surveys on school infrastructure, the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and the Right to Education Act had over the past decade and a half ensured access to schools for most children. According to the latest District Information System for Education, no government school in Chandigarh, Daman & Diu, Delhi, Lakshadweep and Pondicherry has toilets for both boys and girls.
Bihar has the biggest requirement with 17,982 of the 70,673 schools in the State with no such facilities for girl students. And 9,225 of the schools have dysfunctional toilets. The next in line is West Bengal with 13,608 of the State’s 81,915 government schools do not have toilets for girls.
Other States lagging behind include Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh.
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But in States like Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Punjab, and Uttaranchal, what is required is a mop up exercise with most schools having toilet facilities for both girls and boys. More than providing for the infrastructure, the bigger requirement, according to educationists inside and outside the government system, is maintenance.