Pit Stop

A community campaign helps relegate field squats to history in a Himachal village

TILL a year ago, Sheel, nine km from Solan, was indistinguishable from any Indian village in its habits. Pre-dawn and twilight were the usual times for the members of the 40-odd families to hit the hillsides with their lotas. Though only about a dozen families are BPL, not one house had a hole in the ground, forget a pucca toilet. And talk of personal hygiene was completely taboo.

But today, Leela Sharma, an articulate, middle-aged woman, can speak at length about the downside of open defecation. What8217;s more, she can convince her fellow villagers about the need to change an ancient practice.

On September 9, at least 100 women8212;some of them curious visitors from adjoining villages8212;assembled at the newly built community hall at Sheel to celebrate one year of 8216;liberation8217; from field squats. Sheel is the first village in the region to be officially declared ODF open-defecation-free; now it8217;s the role model for at least half-a-dozen villages in the Top ki Ber panchayat, which is in the race for the certification, which will allow them to compete for a government sanitation reward.

Yet the beginning was so tough, recalls Sharma, pradhan of the local Mahila Mandal, which spearheaded the campaign. 8220;Change happens when there is will, and it has to come spontaneously. So we began by informing everyone about the negative impact of open defecation. We told them that excreta could mix with water, contaminate drinking water and enter our bodies through food, thereby causing diseases.8221;

When villagers pleaded poverty to say they couldn8217;t build toilets, the Mahila Mandal directed them to simply dig holes and cover the excreta with soil. Subsequently, some families dug shallow trenches a little distance away from their houses. Then someone had the brainwave of covering the trenches, and a temporary toilet was born. Now, every single residence in the village has its own 8216;toilet8217;, which even the domestics use.

LAUNCHED in Kullu last year by the District Rural Development Agency, the ODF campaign already has 41 villages of two panchayats8212;Tegu Ber and Katrain8212;under its belt. The community-led drive has also taken off in Kangra, Mandi, Hamirpur and Sirmour; a total of 160 villages are expected to get the certification in Kullu by March 2007.

8220;Our total sanitation campaign is gradually breaking the barriers,8221; says Rakesh Kaushal, director of the HPRDA.

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Part of the reason why the campaign has proved so successful is because the impact is often immediate. This monsoon, while most of the adjoining villages were struggling with diarrhoea and other seasonal ailments, Sheel was a shining exception.

8220;Not a single case of diarrhoea was reported from Sheel,8221; confirms Solan block development officer Bhawana Kashyap. 8220;I8217;m delighted with the way women8217;s groups and mahila mandals are taking charge of the way they live.8221;

Sharma, however, is certain that the endeavour could not have been successful without the involvement of the entire community. But charged with the success in her own village, she has now volunteered to become a resource person to help the Solan development block become an ODF model.