The Hindu : Karnataka News : `Sanitation vital in reducing child mortality, morbidity'

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 15, 2005

Karnataka

Karnataka

`Sanitation vital in reducing child mortality, morbidity'

Staff Reporter

Barely 22 per cent of the population in rural India has access to toilets

CREATING AWARENESS: The Minister of State for Rural Water Supply, B. Sathyanarayana (left), with V.P. Baligar, Secretary, Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, and Vipul Mitra, Secretary, Department of Rural Development, Gujarat, at a wo rkshop on `Communication plan for Total Sanitation Campaign,' in Bangalore on Tuesday. — Photo: K. Gopinathan

BANGALORE: Barely 22 per cent of the population in rural India has access to toilets and sanitation. In Raichur and Gulbarga districts, only one in ten households has a toilet, even though it is affluent enough to have a television set and other home appliances, the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj Secretary, V.P. Baligar, said here on Tuesday.

In his keynote address at a workshop on "Communication Plan for Total Sanitation Campaign" for the States of Gujarat, Maharashtra and Karnataka, Mr. Baligar said although the first sanitation project was launched in 1986, it did not make much headway because of systemic failure.

Community programme

But the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) being implemented by the Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (KRWSSA), with support from UNICEF, is a community-led participatory programme that seeks to address sanitation needs through awareness and motivation.

UNICEF-WESS chief, the Delhi-based Lizette Burgers, said India is ideally suited to demonstrate that access to adequate sanitation is more vital in decreasing child mortality and morbidity than access to safe water. The Millennium Environmental Goals has also underlined this fact. "Even if the idea touches 5 per cent of the population and persuades them to become toilet users, it will make a vast impact," Ms. Burgers said.

Sanitation communication and hygiene promotion is still a new concept, and that means there is ample room for experimentation and coming up with ways to provide access to sanitation, she said.

Kumar Alok, Director (Central Rural Sanitation Project), Government of India, said the country is racing towards total sanitation in rural areas. Ten years ago, the allocation was Rs. 120 crores, which grew to Rs. 700 crores. The Government now plans to reach 507 districts in the current phase of the programme.

The Minister of State for Rural Water Supply, B. Sathyanarayana, who inaugurated the workshop, said the TSC, launched in 1999, is a community-led, people-centred programme that stresses on awareness creation and generation of demand from the people for sanitary facilities in homes, schools, anganwadis, communities and for a cleaner environment.

The strategy is to mount intensive information, education and communication (IEC) campaigns, shift to a low-subsidy regime and demand-driven approach. Apart from this, alternative services such as rural sanitary marts, production centres and trained masons are needed. Priority will be given to the construction and use of toilets in schools and anganwadis by dovetailing finds from other rural development programmes to supplement activities under the TSC, Mr. Sathyanarayana said.

The KRWSSA Director, L.K. Atheeq, said that in Karnataka, the TSC was launched in Bellary, Dakshina Kannada and Mysore in February 2000. The programme has been sanctioned for the remaining 24 districts.

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