Rural India will banish open defecation in 10 years: Jairam Ramesh

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said that the rural areas of the country would be free of open defecation within a decade.

"All the 2,65,000 gram panchayats in the country will be open defecation-free in ten years," Ramesh said, speaking at a seminar here.

He agreed that Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan should be considered more than just a toilet-building programme. "It highlights the concerns about privacy, security and dignity of women," he said, and assured that the campaign would be revamped.

In the past, toilet-building programmes of governments were half-hearted endeavours, with the exception of Maharashtra where a third of the gram panchayats are "open defecation free", Ramesh said.

But now even a state such as Haryana, considered to be having "a patriarchal" society, had taken up the challenge in a big way with the slogan "sauchalaya nahi to dulhan nahi" (no bride if there is no toilet), he said.

Quoting 2011 census data, the minister said 60% of village households still do not have access to proper toilet facilities. He praised the success of Sikkim and Himachal Pradesh on this front, apart from that of Maharashtra.