Jamshedpur : Chotta Gamharia panchayat has became the first panchayat in the state to attain open defecation free (ODF) status, under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan of the Central government in the year 2015.
The panchayat having 1,813 households and a population of 11,379 (male 5104 and female 6275) had nearly 297 household latrine constructed between October 2014 and March 2015 to attain the status.
The panchayat representatives were felicitated for attaining the status at a function organised by Integrated Development Fund (IDF), a partner agency of Global Sanitation Fund (GSF), in association with drinking water and sanitation department of Seraikela-Kharsawan district near Gamharia block office.
�It was an ambitious project and we are happy to complete it. We constructed nearly 297 latrines for individual households at a cost of Rs 12,000 under the newly launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan of the Union Government. Under this scheme, Rs 9000 (75 percent) was contributed by the Union government while Rs 3000 (25 percent) was given by state government,� said director IDF Manoj Kumar Verma.
Program manager, IDF Seraikela-Kharsawan, Sujoy Kundu said that villagers were quite reluctant for the construction of toilets due to lack of water supply.
�All the families of our village have toilets and open defecation is a matter of the past. Villagers, mostly tribals, use their toilets and there is strict prohibition on open defecation,� said Kamala Jani, an elderly woman.
It was not easy to inculcate the toilet culture in the villagers as they were habituated to defecating in the open. It took a series of awareness camps by the district administration to make the villagers conscious about ill-effects of open defecation. �When we approached the villagers to construct individual toilets at their home their response was negative. The villagers were reluctant to construct toilets,� said an official.
�We were determined and made the villagers realise the ill-effects of open defecation through a string of street plays, posters and pictorial presentations,� he added. Once the villagers understood how they are suffering from various diseases like diarrhea and malaria due to defecating in the open, they gradually followed our advice, he said.
India has the world�s largest population that defecates in the open. According to data released by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) in December 2013, 59.4 per cent of rural India defecates in the open.
Jharkhand and Odisha are the worst performers with 90.5 per cent and 81.3 per cent of their population without toilets respectively. The rude shock came in 2012 when the 2011 Census put the national toilet coverage at only 31 per cent. MDWS had all along put the figure at 68 per cent (see �Do rural Indian homes have enough toilets?�).
From 1990 to 2010, the number of people with access to some kind of toilet rose from 26 per cent to 50 per cent, states the ministry data. But during this period, there was a similar increase in the population as well, neutralising the gains.
