From Arrah Municipality compound in Bihar to The Statue of Liberty in New York via Banaras, Vrindavan and Uttarakhand, it took more than four-decade to translate Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar’s thoughts and philosophies into action – Liberation for more than one million scavengers and making over 650 scavenging-free cities in India.
By Shivnath Jha
June 23, 1983! The mercury soared high in Patna and so did the climax building up around the finals of the Prudential World Cup. The underdogs India were to take on the might of two times reigning champions – the West Indies. Soaked in the fervour was our starving family. My employer the Indian Nation, where I was working as a reporter, had not paid salaries for the past several months. The newspaper organization, owned by the scions of the erstwhile kingdom of Darbhanga (in north Bihar), had contributed a lot for the social upliftment of Bihar. But its coffers were drying up fast. The income of my ageing father was not enough to keep us going. We had got accustomed to going to bed, empty stomach.
Perhaps Prudential Cup was a chance to work out a strategy to cash in on the euphoria, for my newspaper and my family. Before joining this newspaper, I was “simply a newspaper hawker” who paddled in the street of Patliputra, once the kingdom of Chandragupta.
I worked out with Sri Girindra Mohan Bhatt, the then advertisement manager of the newspaper, and prepared a chart of the World Cup matches. Bhatt, who had been my mentor since I joined the organization in 1974 during the Jayprakash Narayan’s “social revolution”, just after my matriculation and had facilitated my higher education, had approved my idea of getting the chart sponsored by some organisation. He suggested me the name of a person, who had launched a movement for the scavengers to give them a new social, economic, cultural dignity in the mainstream of the society – the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and Bhimrao Ambedkar.
It was around 1.30 pm and the mercury had scaled a scorching 48+ degrees on the Patna roads. I was determined to meet the gentleman, who was living in Patliputra Colony, about 15-kilometer from our rented residence. Though it was my first meeting, I narrated the entire thing and requested him to please sponsor this chart. It will be published in the next days’ morning edition newspaper with the report of Prudential World Cup story, if India wins. I was chanting “Hanuman Chalisa” and “Shani Mantra”. He was wearing simple kurta-pyjama and had just finished his lunch. I could smell the taste of aloo-parval that was lying on the dining table in front of the main door. I had had no food. I was famished. Will he oblige? If so then even I could have a feast.
He signed at the back of the chart in approval and asked me to give it to Bhatt ji – as an advertisement. But this was not enough. He took out twenty two Rs 100 notes from the right pocket of his kurta. He gave them to me saying: “this is for your thought and your labour”. I could not believe my luck. I thought I was dreaming.
Back at home, I handed over the money to my mother (four years ago she left for heavenly abode), and asked her to arrange food for all of us.
Today, he is a socio-economic-religious-cultural guardian of over million downtrodden people, the victims of middle/upper class/caste people of the society and the system. For them, “he is the modern Gandhi for them.” The government of India also recognized his contribution in the society and conferred him with “Padm Bhushan”, one of the highest civilian awards of the country after Bharat Ratna and Padma Vibhushan.
He is Dr Bindeshwar Pathak.
A great humanist and social reformer of contemporary India, Dr Pathak, is the leader of an international crusade for restoration of human rights and dignity to millions of scavengers (cleaners and carriers of human excreta), traditionally known as untouchables.
Great Nobel Laureate V S Naipaul in his book “An Area of Darkness” has described that “it is a far grimmer scenario when womenfolk have to go out for defecation in the open exposing human dignity and risking criminal assaults…..he (Dr Pathak) has provided safe and hygienic human waste disposal system which can benefit 700 million Indians who go for open defecation, even along the roads and railway tracks.”
He is guardian of millions of scavengers throughout the country. Reason: He has restored their dignities.
Two years back, India’s apex court, had directed the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) to explore the possibility of Sulabh’s intervention to render relief and sustenance to the widows, destitute mothers – abandoned in various government runs widow homes in Uttar Pradesh. In its social justice litigation plaint filed before the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India, the NALSA had sought protection and amelioration of the situations faced by old and destitute “Vrindavan Widows”.
The petition stated that “the bodies of widows, who lived in the government shelter homes at Vrindavan, were disposed by chopping them into pieces and putting them in gunny bags on the plea of lack of money for their proper cremation.” Many of them live in government-run homes under pathetic conditions without any proper food, medical and hygiene facilities.
The petition stated, they come to Vrindavan seeking the blessings of Lord Krishna, who according to their faith, was born and lived in Mathura. They eke their livelihood by singing Bhajans in the ashrams and temples. A large number of them are forced to remain in Vrindavan on account of poverty and lack of support from their own families. Some have been abandoned in Vrindavan by their close relatives..
Dr. Pathak had joined the liberation of scavengers’ cell of the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee in 1968 when he was entrusted with the task of finding out an alternative to scavenging. He developed a technology of two-pit pourflush toilet (popularly known as Sulabh Shauchalaya).
It is said that by the time he found the alternative to scavenging, the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee was dissolved by the government. That year, he founded – Sulabh Shauchalaya Sansthan, to carry out the work of liberation of scavengers. Thus, the seeds of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement were sown in 1970.
In 1973, he had put up just two Sulabh Shauchalayas for demonstration in the compound of the Arrah Municipality, a small town of Bihar. Since then Sulabh has converted about one million bucket latrines into Sulabh Shauchalayas throughout the country; and more than a million scavengers have been liberated and over 650 towns have been made scavenging-free.
Dr Pathak said: “Before 1974, public latrines in India were regarded as hell-holes. Nobody was able to find a solution to this problem. I found one and, on that basis, over 7,500 public toilet complexes are being maintained absolutely clean, spick and span in 25 states and four Union Territories, in 1585 towns, including metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. These Sulabh toilet complexes are used by over 15 million people a day.”
In 1978, seeing the success of the scavengers’ liberation movement in Bihar, the Ministry of Works and Housing, Government of India, in collaboration with the WHO and UNICEF, organised a national seminar in Patna in 1978 on conversion of bucket latrines and liberation of scavengers and approved the Sulabh technology and methodology for adoption by individuals as well as institutions. And, thus the work of liberating scavengers and the maintenance of public latrines and baths started from Bihar.
In early 1980s, he persuaded the Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, to include liberation of scavengers and their rehabilitation programme on the ‘whole-town approach’ basis. Under the scheme, implementation of the Protection of Civil Rights Act 1980-81, was taken up in two towns of Bihar, Biharsharif and Purnia. Later, the programme was moved on to other states.
Realizing that the liberation and rehabilitation of scavengers or Balmikis was not an easy task -it was indeed difficult, for the worst victims of institutionalised discrimination over the centuries, to break out of the vicious circle and join the mainstream of society – Dr. Pathak devised a well thought-out and multi-pronged strategy to rehabilitate them by providing them alternative employment and integrating them into the mainstream.
This holistic approach was radically different from other social reform movements in that it combines technology with social idealism.
“With our painstaking efforts, we have been able to liberate and rehabilitate more than a million Balmikis during its four-decade old struggle,” said Dr Pathak and added “social adoption has salutary effect on the integration of the Balmikis in the mainstream of society.”
In 1998 Sulabh set up a People’s Commission on the Abolition of Scavenging. The then Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, inaugurated the commission led Justice M.N. Venkatachalliah, former Chief Justice of India, who was also the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission.
In the developed countries, says Dr Pathak, the standard practice for the sanitary disposal of human waste is sewerage. Due to financial constraints, lime required to lay sewers and exorbitant maintenance and operational costs, sewerage is not the answer at present to solve the problem of human waste management in the country.
It may be mentioned here that sewerage was first introduced in London in 1850, followed by New York in 1860. Calcutta in India was the next city in the world to have this privilege in 1870, yet out of over 4,800 towns/cities in India only 232 have the sewerage system and that too partially.
It is said that a total of 2.4 billion people in the world were without access to improved sanitation at the beginning of the year 2000. In India, the percentage coverage increased from 21 to 31 during the same period.
Recycling and use of human excreta for biogas generation is an important way to get rid of health hazards from human excreta, besides promoting use of biogas for cooking, lighting and electricity generation. Biogas digesters when attached to public toilet complex recycles human waste into biogas. The biogas from public toilets has multiple benefits – improving sanitation, community health and hygiene, environment and providing dignity to women and girls. In addition to using biogas for different purposes. To overcome the problems, Dr. Pathak invented an efficient design of biogas plant linked with public toilets.
The biogas produced is used for cooking, lighting mantle lamps, and electricity generation. Cooking is the most convenient use of biogas. Recently Sulabh has modified the generator set which earlier required 20% diesel and 80% biogas. It does not require diesel and runs on 100% biogas. This has made electricity generation from biogas more sustainable.
“Earlier there was a social stigma and psychological taboo attached to handling of human excreta. It could also be due to the fact that only people of lowest economic and social strata were supposed to be associated with this job. Due to the efforts of Sulabh, and financial viability, people from higher social status now compete to take up sanitation projects without psychological reservations,” Dr Pathak added.
Meanwhile, in 2008, the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) invited Sulabh to host ‘Mission Sanitation’, a special cultural event in collaboration with UN-NGO-IRENE Network at the United Nations, New York, on July 2, 2008, to seek and raise awareness and accelerate the progress towards improved sanitation worldwide.
Dr Pathak said: Perhaps it was first and only incident in the world where rehabilitated women scavengers, accompanied by prominent models wearing Indian garments embroidered by them, walked the ramp in the United Nations with great pride and grace,”
In 2009, the organization declared November 19 – birthday of late prime minister Indira Gandhi as ‘World Toilet Day’ with a declaration by the erstwhile scavenging women that their home town of Alwar in Rajasthan, was completely free from scavenging and they were able to move about like equal citizens without anybody ever looking at them with contempt.
The organization got a feather in its cap in 2012 when three young brides who had deserted their husbands on the ground that there was “no toilet” at their in-laws houses. Dr Pathak stands after them and had also rewarded them with Rs. 2 lakh draft each, as a pat for their courageous stand to demand toilets.
Meanwhile, to strengthen the move of Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi for “Swaksh Bharat – Swasth Bharat campaign” launched on October 2 this year to mark 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, Sulabh has initiated a campaign to make India free of open defecation by 2019.
According to Dr. Pathak, “the country has the technology and the methodology, but lacking the infrastructure and financial resources.” He said that the nation needs funds to the tune of about 2.6 lakh crore considering each toilet will cost about Rs 20,000 and about 50,000 strong volunteers to achieve the target.
The organization which has so far constructed 1.3 million toilets for households using cheap, two-pit technology, also launched “Sulabh Swachhta Rath” equipped with solar energy system, audio-visual gadget (speakers, big LED screen outside the bus and four small screens inside the bus), camera and toilet is all set to travel across India to spread the message of Swachh Bharat Mission and importance of toilets.
Meanwhile, Mahatma Gandhi and Dr. Bhimrao Ambedkar had dreamt of such a happening. Now, the dream has come true. This act helped to remove, to a considerable degree, social untouchability and discrimination from the caste-ridden Indian society: a shameful practice attached to 5,000 years of social prejudice. It was the beginning of lighting of a candle in the darkness and a first step in the journey of miles.
Let’s pray for a clean India – ecologically and morally.
(Shivnath Jha is a senior journalist and works for Special Broadcasting Service SBS Radio – Hindi Service – from India)
