Addressing Significant Concerns to Bring Positive Shift in Sanitation!
Adequate waste management practices are of crucial importance if we talk about achieving the goal of a Swachh Bharat in Urban areas of our developing country. With the presence of unauthorized colonies and slums managing both solid and liquid waste becomes a more significant challenge causing hindrance in making cities cleaner. Apart from this, urban India tackles with the problem of space crunch and constructing a toilet in the limited space available is an arduous project the civic bodies deeply struggle with. Often the toilets built are unusable, these are not properly maintained which is why these are unhygienic and unclean. This leads the masses dwelling in such areas to find an open ground for relieving themselves — the biggest barrier in eliminating open defecation.
So, to achieve the status of open defecation free there are a few concerns that need addressing, find out more about them below:
- Once a village, block or district acquires the open defecation free status the district administration becomes lenient and feel no pressure to continue the activities needed to maintain the status. Thus regular monitoring or spot-checking is essential so that the villages that are declared ODF do not start with old practices.
- To achieve the objective of Swachh Bharat volunteers should be motivated to work for sanitation and offered incentives if needed.
- Under Swachh Bharat Mission using Gramin Toilet should be emphasized. The men should be asked not to go relieve themselves at any place they can find. There should be a trained workforce that can trigger communities by bringing behavioral change. People should be educated about how inadequate sanitation along with lack of necessary facilities such as clean drinking water can have adverse effects on human life.
- There should be an emphasis on fact verification at ground level to ensure the reporting of government set targets is accurate.
- Even after a ban on manual scavenging, the unofficial figures reveal that it is still widely practiced where people from the Dalit community are majorly involved. Steps need to be taken to reform their lives and to eliminate this practice.
India Sanitation Coalition battles actively for an ODF, clean and disease-free India along with multiple stakeholders in order to achieve sustainable sanitation. This platform also curates productive WASH modules and are the catalysts vigorously trying to bring change where people shift to safe sanitation practices. In order to learn more about their initiatives and undertaken projects visit their website and connect with them today.
