Skip to main content

'Model' Gujarat's 46% rural households don't have drainage, worse than UP, Bihar: GoI

By A Representative
“Model” Gujarat’s rural areas continue to suffer from a major lag in the drainage system, if the latest Government of India (GoI) report, “Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing Condition”, a survey carried out between July and December 2018 across the country, is any indication.
The survey report, which was released last week, says that as against the national average of 38.9% rural households having no drainage system, Gujarat’s 45.5% rural households do not have any drainage facility.
Published by the National Statistical Organization (NSO), there are only five major states, where a higher percent of rural households has no drainable facility – these are Odisha (82%), West Bengal (69.6%), Jharkhand (56.9%), Assam (53.4%), and Tamil Nadu (52.6%).
Several of the so-called Bimaru states are better performers than Gujarat. Thus, in Rajasthan 44.6% households have no drainage, followed by Madhya Pradesh (41.6%), Chhattisgarh (41.1%), Bihar (36.4%), and Uttar Pradesh (19.4%).
Interestingly, the survey also shows that, in Gujarat, the wastewater disposal into the drainage system takes place from 32.9 rural households, while in a whopping 45.5% of cases wastewater disposal takes place without treatment and in the open, low lying areas and streets, and in 5.1% of cases it is allowed to go to nearby rivers or nallas.
As for the country as a whole, 48.1% of the households in the rural areas disposed of household waste water without treatment to open low land areas/streets while in 9.3% cases, it goes into rivers or nallas.
Interestingly, the figure of a whopping 45.5% households lacking drainage system comes against the backdrop of the report claiming that Gujarat’s only 0.5% rural households are such were no water is available in or around the latrines.

Comments

TRENDING

The “Dr” debate masks a larger crisis in allied-health education

By Dr P K Gupta*  India’s allied-health professions have long operated in a fragmented landscape of universities, hospitals, State authorities and private institutions, each with its own nomenclature, curriculum and standards. The National Commission for Allied and Healthcare Professions Act, 2021 was meant to correct this by creating a unified national framework for education, professional regulation and institutional recognition. Few dispute the need for such oversight. The real question is whether standardisation is quietly becoming synonymous with longer courses, additional internships and new professional titles—changes that risk masking deeper gaps in clinical training, institutional capacity and affordability.

Pilgrimage or pollution? The waste crisis of Indian faith

By Raj Kumar Sinha*  In today's times, there are certain issues that are constantly talked about and discussed, yet no visible impact seems to be made. Beyond water, soil, and pollution, one crisis that continues to be overlooked is waste. Like other life-threatening problems, waste too is gradually moving toward burying and obliterating us. After the Kanwar Yatra in Haridwar, approximately 8,000 tonnes of waste were left behind on the riverbanks, including bottles filled with urine. 

Arrival of USS Lincoln: A ‘leisure trip’ to Thailand or a neo-colonial move to commodify women?

By Benyasiri Eimviriyapong   The arrival of the USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) for a ‘leisure trip’ in Thailand before returning to its campaign of destruction against the people of West Asia demands immediate interrogation and opposition. For us Thai people, and those in sites of American plunder across the globe, this a rattling of the US’ cold war colonial chains on its most loyal lap dog, while conducting a war of aggression in Iran and the ongoing genocide in Palestine. In allowing the USS Lincoln to dock, the Thai ruling elites are once again facilitating a system of imperial violence that extends far beyond Southeast Asian borders, a system which in our case, is predicated on sexual violence and femicide.