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Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Cleanliness- Next to Godliness

In a country as big as the entire Europe, and population exceeding that of combined Europe and United States of America the basic amenities related to basic health and sanitation is just comparable with Africa or even worse! Is it not a pity that even after sixty years of Independence we have not been able to meet the basic needs of the teeming millions!

The situation gets worse when it comes to avaiability of potable water and even the toilets! It is a despicable sight to see hundreds of people in the villages, small towns, and even in bigger cities heading to the fields and open areas to attend to the nature's call!

I remember when I was still studying is the school, I went to attend a NCC camp while in Class VII. It was a funfilled time with an opportunity to live in the tents for the first time! Every morning it was a nightmare to find a place in the adjoing fields to attend to the nature's call. Not only did I feel ashamed but it would give me shudders as I wanted to get ovcer with it before the sun rise! This was the predicament of a boy just about twelve year old so I can imagine how the girls much younger or even older would be feeling every day, for almost their entire lives if they did not live in a different environment!


India leads the world in open defecation. At least 636 million Indians lack toilets, according to the latest census data, a crisis that contributes to disease, childhood malnutrition, loss of economic output and, violence against women.

The issue is so critical that it featured prominently in Narendra Modi's maiden Independence Day speech, in which the prime minister said"We are in the 21st century and yet there is still no dignity for women as they have to go out in the open to defecate and they have to wait for darkness to fall," Modi said. "Can you imagine the number of problems they have to face because of this?"

Many a social ills continue to get nurtured and even thrive because we have never really addressed these problems! Not surprizingly, many a young girls get kidnapped and eventually get raped and sometimes even murdered as they had no choice but to go to the open fields and fell easy prey to evil desire of lusty men! How can we say we are any different from beasts when one hears such horror stories day after day.

Many a NGOs/ the government bodies and private enterprise have finally now woken up to the stark reality to set up toilet facilities.India could also learn valuable lessons from poorer neighbours such as Bangladesh, which has cut rates of open defecation from 19% to 3% in just two years by decentralising sanitation programmes.

Domex a major brand has initiated a campaign and is supporting the cause to eradicate open defectation.For more details please go to (www.domex.in )

PS: This is my blog post for "Toilet for Babli' initiative sponsored by Indiblogger and Domex( http://www.domex.in/.)

4 comments:

  1. It is very true.Even the paid public toilets are not maintained properly, and to think there is an attendant, whose duty is to see that everything is spic and clean. Sometimes when we are forced to use such paid toilets and complain about it, the person has the audacity of saying it can't be like your own toilet. Even in good hotels on the high ways don't maintain their toilets well. First thing, they are made very narrow with hardly any room, and everything is always wet, and one doesn't even feel like touching any of the handles, and they would never have proper soap dispensers. Even in Malls you would not find toilet papers, when asked why, their standard reply would be ' no stock'.
    All these Domex, Harpic dettol companies are there only to make money for themselves, there are not there to clean India, to spread awareness among people. No one really cares. You can still find people using empty plots to their dirty jobs.
    Less said about train toilets the better.
    I think it would take millions of years before we can have good toilet facilities like Europe and the US and other western countries. The excuse we get, is that there are more people in India, and thus it is difficult to enforce it. For everything starting from roads to toilets their only excuse is to blame the population.

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  2. Rama that is the precise summary of the prevailing situation! Every opportunity missed takes us behind by a few years and in most of basic standards of living we are a few decades behind any developed nation:(

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  3. We have touched several peaks in technology in very short span… but what need to be addressed first still lacks

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