Vidya Balan, who received the Best Actress National Film Award for her role in 2011 Bollywood hit 'The Dirty Picture', will now play a role to alter the real dirty picture in India. Union Minister of Rural Development Jairam Ramesh has named the Bollywood actress as the brand ambassador in his... Read more...
India, a leading economic power capable of launching nuclear missiles, is finding it difficult to provide sustainable drinking water and sanitation services. It took the country’s apex auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) to point its finger to the shame of slippage... Read more...
A young woman who sparked a "sanitation revolution" in her village by forcing her husband to build a toilet in their home has been presented with a cheque for 500,000 Rupees (US$ 10,000). Anita Narre of Chichouli village of Betul district in Madhya Pradesh received the award from Union Minister of... Read more...
Arsenic affected patients from West Bengal. Photo: SOES Bone deformities due to arsenic poisoning of groundwater are common among the youth in Bengal, the Indian army has found. Less than 100 youths among the 2,000 who turned up for an army recruitment drive in February 2012, passed the physical... Read more...
Nearly half of India's 1.2 billion people have no toilet at home, but more people own a mobile phone, according to the country's latest census data. Only 46.9% of the 246.6 million households have toilets while 49.8% defecate in the open. The remaining 3.2% use public toilets. Read more...
A model where public funds provide the back-end and private funds provide the front-end can fill the gap in sanitation financing in India, writes Anupam Tyagi from the International Management Institute in the Economic Times of February 9th, 2012. Read more...
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/35922061] The high incidence of open defecation in the Indian state of Bihar is not due to a lack awareness about toilets, according to this new Water for People video . In their view, it's more of a supply chain, marketing problem. The toilets on offer are not particularly... Read more...
Queuing for the Gents in Mumbai. Photo: Hindustan Times A slum resident from Mahim in Mumbai ended up killing his neighbour whom he felt had taken too long in a public toilet. Locals feel the tragic death could have been avoided if only the civic authorities had provided sufficient public toilets... Read more...
In India, though considerable investments are made through the Total Sanitation Campaign (flagship program of Govt of India) the ground realities of sanitation facilities are very poor and alarmingly dangerous for human health. Read more...
Why do families build toilets? If the family tradition for many generations has been to defecate in the open – using local woods or accepted sites, then what is the incentive to make a break and opt for a toilet instead? Read more...
When three small towns in the state of Karnataka, India attempted to provide continuous water supply to their citizens through a public-private partnership, they faced disbelief even ridicule. A sustained and strategic communication campaign over several years finally enabled the Karnataka Urban... Read more...
An Indian e-toilet manufacturer has partnered with a local animation institute to create hygiene promotion cartoons for schools. Read more...
Amraiwadi, a crime-prone slum area of Ahmedabad, is set for a makeover as nearly 1200 families will get one-bedroom flat with good drainage, separate toilets, a drinking water supply, a landscaped garden and a school. This is the first project to be approved by the state Urban Development... Read more...
The government is planning to regulate over-extraction of groundwater in agriculture and industry which is seriously affecting drinking water supply in rural India, new Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said. "80 per cent of drinking water supply schemes of rural India are depending on... Read more...
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="214" caption="Jairam Ramesh. India's new sanitation crusader?"] [/caption] India's new rural development minister Jairam Ramesh has also taken charge of the newly-created Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. Will the former environmental crusader... Read more...
Provision of communal facilities reduces but does not end the problem of open defecation in poverty pockets, according to a new study in Bhopal, India. Women appear to be relatively poorly served by communal facilities and, cost is a barrier to use by poorer households. Read more...
In rural India, extremes of coercion are being used to encourage toilet use writes Liz Chatterjee in the Guardian’s Poverty Matters blog. Her provocative post has drawn comments from the likes of Robert Chambers, Rose George, Ned Breslin and Erik Harvey. Read more...
Interesting key message emerge from a new Research Brief from a recent WSP/World Bank study to improve understanding of the financing of on-site sanitation at the household level through analysis of field experiences in six countries: Bangladesh, Ecuador, India (Maharashtra), Mozambique, Senegal,... Read more...
The Rotary Club will spend 5.5 million Rupees (US$ 121,000) to provide clean drinking water and proper sanitation in schools in Mussoorie, said Rotary District 3080 Governor Madhukar Malhotra. DG Malhotra was attending a programme on the Sanitation and Drinking Water Project for schools held at the... Read more...