Rural Gujarat's 47 per cent people defecate in open, 63 per cent villages don't have drainage facility: NSSO

By A Representative
Latest Government of India data suggest that, despite the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) cleanliness dive launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October 2014, 47.1 per cent of Gujarat’s rural population still defecates in the open, which is worse than as many as nine other major Indian states.
Released in “Swachhta Status Report 2016”, prepared by the National Sample Survey Organization (NSSO), India’s premier data collection centre, the data show that the best performer remains Kerala, where just about 2.3 per cent of people defecating in the open.
The 2011 Census of India figures, released about three years ago, show that Gujarat, considered a model for other states to follow, had 65.76 per cent of 6,765,403 rural households, which would roughly be 2.28 crore of the rural population, used open fields to defecate.
Explaining the reasons for coming up with the report, the NSSO says, “The aim of the SBM is to achieve Swachh Bharat by 2019, as a fitting tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. Especially in the rural areas, it says, it would improve “the levels of cleanliness through solid and liquid waste management activities and making gram panchayats open defecation free, clean and sanitised.”

Among its other objectives are, it says, to remove “the bottlenecks that were hindering the progress, including partial funding for individual household latrines from Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, and focussing on critical issues affecting outcomes.”
The focus areas identified for the SBM in rural areas, according to the NSSO, are not just construction of individual household latrines, saying, “The programme is aimed at covering all the rural families. Incentive as provided under the scheme may be extended to all below poverty line (BPL) households and Above Poverty Line (APL) Households restricted to SCs/STs, small and marginal farmers, landless labourers with homestead, physically challenged and women headed households.”
“The construction of household toilets will be undertaken by the household itself and on completion and use of the toilet, the cash incentive will be given to the household in recognition of its achievement”, the NSSO points out.
Despite the targets, the data show that, despite the SBM, Gujarat has a long way to go, with 44.5 per cent rural households still do not have what the NSSO calls “sanitary toilets” – a category which “ensures safe confinement and disposal of faeces (excreta) and does not require the need for human handling.”

This is against just about 2.4 per cent of Kerala’s rural households not having sanitary toilets, Himachal Pradesh’s 9.6 per cent, Haryana’s 9.8 per cent, Punjab’s 13.3 per cent, Uttarakhand’s 19.5 per cent, Assam’s 33.3 per cent, West Bengal’s 34.9 per cent, and Telangana’s 38.9 per cent.
Interestingly, 62.7 per cent of the villages of Gujarat, if the report is any indication, do not have drainage arrangement, which is worse than the national average of 44.4 per cent – suggesting that even if 55.5 per cent rural households may be having sanitary latrines, many of them are deprived of any facilities in the form of what NSSO calls katchi nali or pakki nali.
---
Download HERE for full report

Comments

Plastic burning in homes threatens food, water and air across Global South: Study

By Jag Jivan In a groundbreaking study spanning 26 countries across the Global South , researchers have uncovered the widespread and concerning practice of households burning plastic waste as a fuel for cooking, heating, and other domestic needs. The research, published in Nature Communications , reveals that this hazardous method of managing both waste and energy poverty is driven by systemic failures in municipal services and the unaffordability of clean alternatives, posing severe risks to human health and the environment.

Economic superpower’s social failure? Inequality, malnutrition and crisis of India's democracy

By Vikas Meshram India may be celebrated as one of the world’s fastest-growing economies, but a closer look at who benefits from that growth tells a starkly different story. The recently released World Inequality Report 2026 lays bare a country sharply divided by wealth, privilege and power. According to the report, nearly 65 percent of India’s total wealth is owned by the richest 10 percent of its population, while the bottom half of the country controls barely 6.4 percent. The top one percent—around 14 million people—holds more than 40 percent, the highest concentration since 1961. Meanwhile, the female labour force participation rate is a dismal 15.7 percent.

The greatest threat to our food system: The aggressive push for GM crops

By Bharat Dogra Thanks to the courageous resistance of several leading scientists who continue to speak the truth despite increasing pressures from the powerful GM crop and GM food lobby , the many-sided and in some contexts irreversible environmental and health impacts of GM foods and crops, as well as the highly disruptive effects of this technology on farmers, are widely known today.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

UP tribal woman human rights defender Sokalo released on bail

By A Representative After almost five months in jail, Adivasi human rights defender and forest worker Sokalo Gond has been finally released on bail.Despite being granted bail on October 4, technical and procedural issues kept Sokalo behind bars until November 1. The Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the All India Union of Forest Working People (AIUFWP), which are backing Sokalo, called it a "major victory." Sokalo's release follows the earlier releases of Kismatiya and Sukhdev Gond in September. "All three forest workers and human rights defenders were illegally incarcerated under false charges, in what is the State's way of punishing those who are active in their fight for the proper implementation of the Forest Rights Act (2006)", said a CJP statement.

Urgent need to study cause of large number of natural deaths in Gulf countries

By Venkatesh Nayak* According to data tabled in Parliament in April 2018, there are 87.76 lakh (8.77 million) Indians in six Gulf countries, namely Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). While replying to an Unstarred Question (#6091) raised in the Lok Sabha, the Union Minister of State for External Affairs said, during the first half of this financial year alone (between April-September 2018), blue-collared Indian workers in these countries had remitted USD 33.47 Billion back home. Not much is known about the human cost of such earnings which swell up the country’s forex reserves quietly. My recent RTI intervention and research of proceedings in Parliament has revealed that between 2012 and mid-2018 more than 24,570 Indian Workers died in these Gulf countries. This works out to an average of more than 10 deaths per day. For every US$ 1 Billion they remitted to India during the same period there were at least 117 deaths of Indian Workers in Gulf ...

Jayanthi Natarajan "never stood by tribals' rights" in MNC Vedanta's move to mine Niyamigiri Hills in Odisha

By A Representative The Odisha Chapter of the Campaign for Survival and Dignity (CSD), which played a vital role in the struggle for the enactment of historic Forest Rights Act, 2006 has blamed former Union environment minister Jaynaynthi Natarjan for failing to play any vital role to defend the tribals' rights in the forest areas during her tenure under the former UPA government. Countering her recent statement that she rejected environmental clearance to Vendanta, the top UK-based NMC, despite tremendous pressure from her colleagues in Cabinet and huge criticism from industry, and the claim that her decision was “upheld by the Supreme Court”, the CSD said this is simply not true, and actually she "disrespected" FRA.

Stands 'exposed': Cavalier attitude towards rushed construction of Char Dham project

By Bharat Dogra* The nation heaved a big sigh of relief when the 41 workers trapped in the under-construction Silkyara-Barkot tunnel (Uttarkashi district of Uttarakhand) were finally rescued on November 28 after a 17-day rescue effort. All those involved in the rescue effort deserve a big thanks of the entire country. The government deserves appreciation for providing all-round support.

'Restructuring' Sahitya Akademi: Is the ‘Gujarat model’ reaching Delhi?

By Prakash N. Shah* A fortnight and a few days have slipped past that grim event. It was as if the wedding preparations were complete and the groom’s face was about to be unveiled behind the ceremonial tinsel. At 3 PM on December 18, a press conference was poised to announce the Sahitya Akademi Awards .

Search This Blog