On most evenings, Lallan can be found plying a cycle rickshaw through the streets of Karol Bagh.
On this April day, however, Lallan is in his home village of Virhamatpur, more than 650 km away from the national capital.
He has returned home for two weeks specifically to build a toilet. He stands shoulder-deep in a pit, as his wife Najima passes him bricks to line its walls in the distinctive honeycomb fashion needed for the twin leach pit toilets that are springing up across rural India as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Modi government’s flagship sanitation programme.
District-wide drive
Lallan’s toilet is part of Mission Battees (Mission Thirty Two), a district sanitation drive conducted in the last week of March.
“We were trying to set a Guinness world record by building 32,000 toilets in 120 hours between March 26 and 30,” says district magistrate J.B. Singh.
“Masons and villagers were building day and night in some places. It was like a mela.” But the Guinness World Records require a six-month prior notice to monitor record-breaking feats, and that attempt fell through.
However, he adds that more such “record-breaking” toilet-building drives may be needed to meet the remaining target of 2.65 lakh new toilets, in order to ensure total access for the district’s 4.96 lakh rural households by the deadline of October 2018.
When The Hindu toured parts of the district five days after the end of the Mission, it was clear that while the district may not have succeeded in completing 32,000 toilets — many, like Lallan’s, were still in different stages of construction — it is slowly succeeding in changing sanitation behaviours in one of the country’s most backward districts.
Lying just over 100 km east of Lucknow, Gonda district last hit national headlines when its district headquarters was named the dirtiest city in India in the 2017 Swachh Survekshan rankings. It’s an insult that rankles, and both district officials and some villagers identified that moment of shame as one of the driving motivations behind Mission Battees.
Honour and shame — izzat and sharam — are words that recur when villagers, especially women, are asked about what motivated them to build a toilet. “In the fields, we have to be ready to cover ourselves every time a man comes near. Now we can go to the toilet in private, and keep our izzat,” says Saburinissa. Her husband Nasirullah, however, admits that he and his sons still use the fields.
Masons, or mistrys, are among those who benefit from the surge of construction. “I used to have to go to Delhi in order to get work, but for now, there is enough work so I can stay in Gonda with my family,” says Rizwan, a mistry who has been building twin pit toilets at a rate of ₹3,500–4,000 each.
Messages on dignity
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan uses a range of motivational messages in an effort to trigger change, including the honour and dignity of women, safety and convenience, children’s health, savings in medical costs, and the introduction of a toilet as a status symbol. Especially in villages with active safai karmis, or village sanitation workers, some of these messages have been absorbed.
However, the single strongest motivation seems to be the ₹12,000 incentive promised by the government. Even in villages with few toilets, or none at all, it is well known as the “bara hazaar” (twelve thousand) toilet scheme.
Gonda’s chief development officer Divya Mittal has her own theory on why Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is making inroads into behaviour change. “This is not a top-down scheme, it is a community-led scheme. The government is not building the toilets. That was tried 10 years ago, and those toilets were not used and fell apart because the people had no investment, no stake. If a man builds his own toilet, he will use it,” she says. For Mission Bathees, she expects to receive money from the Central government in two weeks.
Although the money is being paid by cheques or direct bank transfer, local corruption still exists. In the village of Bharaipara, Sushila Misra complains that her pradhan extracted ₹1,500 from her. In Mughaljot, villagers allege bias and favouritism in the way that the pradhan and his men have selected the first beneficiaries. Since beneficiaries must begin building a toilet before any money is paid, the scheme first benefits those who have cash to put upfront. If “bara hazaar” is the carrot, then pressure — from the district government, from the pradhan, from their own peers in the village — sometimes acts as a stick. “People are being fined for defecating in the open,” says Vikas Varma of Bhara Para village.
As Lallan and his wife complete their twin pit, they complain that they cannot access many basic rights which the government has guaranteed. But when the “bara hazaar” toilet scheme was announced, Lallan decided to take advantage. “My children should have a toilet. It will make a difference to their future,” he says.
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