Sulabh Swachh Bharat | 48 YEARS OF SWACHHATA

Sulabh has been working tirelessly for the past 48-years as the torchbearer of cleanliness. The leaders of Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement along with thousands of volunteers are working towards the same goal with the same destination. This intention was re-vocalised once again on Sulabh’s 48th Foundation Day celebrations

Sulabh International celebrated its 48th Foundation Day. This journey of one of the world’s largest non-governmental organisations is unique in itself. Sulabh has been working tirelessly for cleanliness, service, and social reform without any donations or dividends for 48 years.  Sulabh has changed the philosophy of cleanliness by working to support the downtrodden and scavengers in the country. Sulabh has followed its philosophy of service throughout the decades.
Service is the philosophy
Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement founder, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak said that Sulabh’s philosophy is to serve others. The goal to realise Mahatma Gandhi’s dream is what led to the birth of Sulabh. Gandhi’s dream was to end the malpractice of manual scavenging and bring the scavengers to the mainstream of society. Sulabh has been working in this direction since its inception. Sulabh has made this the cause of the entire nation.
Changed millions of lives
Today, more than 60,000 volunteers are connected to Sulabh International.  In Sulabh’s 48-year-long journey, more than 15 lakh household and 8,500 public toilets have been built. More than 6 crore public toilets have been made according to Sulabh’s toilet designs. Today, more than 20 million people are using Sulabh toilets daily. More than 10,000 scavengers have been rehabilitated. While Sulabh’s founder Dr Bindeshwar Pathak was born to a very conservative Brahmin family, with the establishment of Sulabh, he illuminated the darkness of countless lives. He researched and developed the two-pit-pour flush toilet in 1968. This was the catalyst that changed both the state and direction of the toilets in India. This new kind of toilet was very useful and cheap to construct.
Since the establishment of Sulabh in 1970 and the construction of public toilets in urban areas in 1974, the two-pit model gained popularity. This model of toilets was first seen in Bihar and soon gained popularity across India.  These Sulabh toilets were based on pay-and-use system and proved to be a boon for the people. These toilets have been the foundation of the improvement in sanitation in India since its inception.
A Culture of Hygiene
Dr Pathak says that the biggest achievement in our 48-year journey is that we have successfully developed a culture of cleanliness. The tree that was planted 48 years ago, has now blossomed and bears flowers and fruits. Sulabh’s journey has touched countless lives. In this 48-year long journey, Sulabh has given so much to society.
Sulabh’s work opportunities
The biggest dilemma faced by scavengers was that if they left the work of manual scavenging, they wouldn’t have any other way of earning a living. Since its inception, Sulabh started working towards helping those facing this dilemma.  Sulabh gave scavengers new ways of earning their livelihood. Sulabh has provided vocational training to rehabilitated scavengers and has helped them gain employment in various fields.
Sulabh’s two-pit toilet
Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, underlining the 48- year journey of Sulabh, says that if Sulabh’s two-pit technology didn’t exist, the country wouldn’t have met the standards of cleanliness and sanitation access it has been able to achieve in the past decades.  Today, the country is close to achieving the dream of ending open defecation altogether, and Sulabh’s twin-pit model has played a crucial role in making that a reality.
Reform along with toilets
Dr Pathak believes that Sulabh has become a vehicle of social reform. He said that the contribution of Sulabh isn’t limited to the toilets. Sulabh has made positive changes by bringing the oppressed scavengers into the mainstream of society along with increasing access to proper sanitation. Simultaneously, it has also played an important part in saving the environment, the rights of the widows and the downtrodden. He said that every year he plays Holi with the widowed mothers of Vrindavan. Dr Pathak said that these are also the different ways in which Sulabh has contributed to the development of the country.
From Toilets To School
Chairman of Sulabh, S P Singh, speaking about Sulabh’s journey said “We have made every possible effort to change the society. When people doubted that toilets wouldn’t change the society, we opened a school, trained people, and brought them into the mainstream.” Sulabh’s Executive Chairman S Chatterjee speaking on the occasion said that when Dr Pathak developed the two-pit toilet model, scientists didn’t believe that it could end a practice that has been going on for thousands of years. But Dr Pathak proved them wrong by helping eliminate manual scavenging in many parts of the country via Sulabh toilets. Sulabh’s famed two-pit toilet is now being implemented in the entire world. Even the New York city celebrates April 14th as Dr Bindeshwar Pathak Day annually.
The pains of scavenging
Hailing from Alwar in Rajasthan, Sulabh society’s president, Usha Chaumar shared her story and the pains experienced by manual scavenging.  She said, “When I did carry nightsoil, I had never fathomed that anyone would ever listen to me.”
Usha said that she had lived two lives in this life -- one as a scavenger, which is very dirty and without honour and second -- after being rehabilitated, a life that has honour and happiness.
Pooja Changra, who came from the same tonk of Rajasthan, told that Sulabh gave her a new life by making her a part of the Sulabh family. She received training via Sulabh’s ‘Nai Disha’ programme and now earns her own livelihood and lives with dignity.
cultural programmes
Sulabh has also emphasized the role of better education in changing the society. Sulabh Public School is a big step in this direction. Most of the children attending this school are from the backward classes of the society. These students not only receive a basic education but also receive vocational training. On the 48th Founder’s day celebration, the students of Sulabh Public School presented a variety of cultural programmes. From ‘Ganesh Vandana’ to ‘Sulabh ko Salaam’, they kept the attendees entertained throughout.
rainbow decorations
On the 48th Foundation Day celebrations, the entire Sulabh gram was decorated. Sulabh’s founder, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak presented flowers at the statues of Mahatma Gandhi and Ambedkar in the Sulabh gram. Over the years, Dr Pathak has been campaigning to enable the suffering widows to lead a normal and dignified life. Through his multiple initiatives for ameliorating these women, he has brought a tangible difference in their lives, and has thus succeeded in his mission to give them a new lease of life. Sulabh has been providing a monthly allowance of Rs 2000/- a month for basic necessities and teaching skills. The festival of Holi has always been a boisterous Hindu festival. Colours play a central role in the celebrations, so much so that it is commonly known as the festival of colours. But for these women it is the definition of freedom, happiness, upliftment and acceptance in the society. It is the true achievement of good over the evil.
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SULABH’S CONTRIBUTION IN WOMEN’S EMPOWERMENT

Man can never be women’s equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her- Gandhi

As long as the world does not have equal social and power relationship between men and women, does not have sufficient gender justice and gender equality, the issue of women’s empowerment will continue to agitate people like us. The point, however, is how to bring about the change on the ground, how to empower women in our society, especially how to empower the women who live on the margins of society and face all sorts of discriminations
Of course, there are several ways to empower women, and Sulabh movement has made significant contribution towards women’s security through nationwide sanitation campaign—especially large-scale construction of household and public toilets, the importance of which can be grasped from the fact that the women suffer the most from the lack of access to toilet—and the welfare work for the widows of Vrindavan and Varanasi. Let’s see what Sulabh organisation has done for the women’s empowerment through running a sustained campaign for providing education and employment to the dalit women of the towns of Alwar and Tonkin the state of Rajasthan.
Till Sulabh intervention, these women cleaned and disposed human excreta with their bare hands from houses lacking flushing toilets—a practice euphemistically called ‘scavenging’, which is illegal and punishable under the Indian law, yet continues in many rural and semi-urban areas—to eke out their living. They were among the most oppressed and desolate segments of Indian society, as they suffered from severe disadvantages of gender, caste and class. Besides lacking material means of a decent living—hygienic shelter, basic healthcare, education, and other necessary resources of improving one’s life—these women, despite the Constitutional assurance of equality, also suffered from extreme social exclusion known as untouchability. Obviously, it was a daunting task to devise and develop appropriate modules for their education, apprenticeships and skill-building that was essential for ensuring their alternative employment without which they could not be liberated from the dehumanizing work of manual scavenging. This was the challenge Sulabh took and succeeded through its multi-pronged endeavors in educating, training and providing alternative employment to them, thus setting an example and a hope for universal education and employability of women, especially those who are at the bottom of a terribly discriminatory system.
Sulabh established a centre called NaiDisha (New Direction) in Alwar in April 2003 with the aim of eradicating manual scavenging and providing alternative employment to the scavenging women. Against severe odds and reservation of the local people, this centre was started with the active support of socially conscious women belonging to the scavenging dalit community in the vicinity. NaiDisha first provided the suffering women basic education before training them in market-friendly trades. We also helped them in developing their self-esteem and their integration in the social mainstream.
Earlier, these women were engaged in manual scavenging because they were born in a community that was traditionally burdened with this inhuman task. NaiDisha encouraged these women to learn vocational skills that would help them leave their hereditary occupation of cleaning excreta. Alongside giving them functional literacy and numeracy, we closely interacted with them, got their feedback into account and created a training module to develop their skill in food processing, cutting and tailoring, carpet making, embroidery, beauty-care, bag making, etc. NaiDisha also paid attention to the trainees’ health and hygiene, as they lived in filthy surroundings and manually cleaned 4 and carried excreta. Health being the key to a person’s well-being, the centre held regular medical check-ups of the trainees.
Sulabh’s initiative for education and liberation of the suffering women of Alwar cannot be grasped without understanding the larger context and objective of our movement. Way back in 1970, inspired by Gandhi’s dream of the untouchables’ emancipation and sanitation for all Indians, Dr Pathak laid the foundation of Sulabh. The aim was to build an effective movement for liberation of the manual scavengers, as well as eradicating open defecation and ensuring clean environment. In subsequent years, Sulabh strove and succeeded in finding a solution to the menace of open defecation through inventing a safe and affordable toilet technology. Sulabh put this technology in practical use, as they constructed a large number of household and public toilets all over India. But our bigger achievement lies in rousing the social conscience and changing the caste-ridden mindset of Indians for restoring the human rights and dignity of a community that has for generations been cruelly ostracized as untouchables.
As the hierarchies of caste and patriarchy have dominated the Indian society through the centuries, it is not unusual that their consequences still dominate our social life. For example, unhygienic dry latrines that still exist in rural and suburban areas have to be manually cleaned and they are invariably cleaned by a particular dalit community and most of them happen to be women. This made Sulabh movement take into account the gender and caste dimension of social and sanitation problems. We also realized that the best way to ensure sanitation, human rights, and women’s education and employment is to adopt a holistic approach because human problems do not exist in isolation but in close proximity. One problem is difficult to be resolved unless other problems are also resolved.

Education, Livelihood and Liberation of Scavenger Women
Sulabh employed an integrated approach for educating and training the women scavengers for alternative employment. They ensured that these people first get motivated and develop a sense of their human potential, which are crucial for laying the foundation of their education and liberation. Alongside giving them basic literacy and training them in market-friendly trades, Sulabh also tried to develop their attitudinal and behavioural skills.
They provided them and their family members a special counselling on the importance of education, health and hygiene. Considering the extremely poor economic condition of 5 these women, NaiDisha gave the trainees a monthly stipend (in the beginning Rs. 1,800 that now has been revised and enhanced to Rs. 3,700) during the training period so that they do not go back to the earlier job of scavenging for their living. Like in our earlier experiments at other places, at NaiDisha, Alwar too, Sulabh adopted as far as possible a multi-faceted approach which has five interconnected stages—liberation, rehabilitation, vocational training, education of next generation, and social elevation.
Besides imparting functional literacy, diverse courses such as food processing, cutting and tailoring were designed to help trainees acquire skills that help them towards self-employment. Normally, such courses are designed for six months or one year but in the case of the scavenger women, they decided to extend it further (to two years, and in some individual cases even longer) considering the fact that they had been doing nothing except manual scavenging for generations. Thus, in our centre, the duration of the training varies depending upon the intelligence quotient of trainees. Based on our experience, they prolonged the duration of their training so that they get a detailed knowledge, both of the technical and practical side of training, which will enable them to compete in the open market.
The two-year training is followed by a one-year period of rehabilitation so that they get sufficient time for earning through putting to productive use their newly acquired skills. We generally put the trained women in two categories. In the first category are those who show initiatives and leadership qualities, who can set up their own enterprise with the help of subsidies and loans available from the government. Such women are able to produce quality material and they have the ability to make necessary arrangements for their marketing. In the second category are those trainees who do not have these abilities and leadership qualities. They are put under a cooperative society that provides them requisite help and assistance.

How Sulabh overcame the odds and obstacles
Transforming the lives of these women was a challenging task. Initially, the scavenging women were not very bothered about personal hygiene. Also, their lurking suspicion against the ‘other people’ reflected in their use of language, which hampered interpersonal communication. But our resource people were mentally prepared for these challenges. Sympathy, patience and perseverance yielded results. These women gradually opened up and showed their potential. Sulabh was able to instill in them a sense of self-worth and dignity. NaiDisha taught them how to begin a new life and rewrite their destiny.
When the first batch of scavenger women joined the training centre, 97 per cent of them were illiterate. During the training all were taught to read and write. Laxmi Nanda, who was unable to read or write, now expresses her feelings through poems. Now all of them have bank accounts, as they receive their monthly stipend through account payee cheques, and they know how to operate.
After their training, 115 women from Alwar have learnt to successfully market the goods they produce. Now these women have organised themselves into self-help groups and are availing credit facilities from banks so that they can market their products effectively, enabling them to earn a steady income.
After the initial hesitation, the people are now buying their food products. Their papad and handmade vermicelli are in great demand in the local markets. The women trained in beauty-care now provide service to the homes the doors of which were earlier closed to them, as they were ‘untouchables’.
Alongside these developments, all dry buckets or pit-latrines (which need to be cleaned manually) have been converted into the Sulabh twin-pit toilets to make Alwar a scavenging-free town.
They have not stopped to Alwar only, Sulabh continued work for women in Tonk, Ghaziabad and many more places. . Like Alwar, the aim of the project was to rehabilitate the scavengers and their children and to ensure the elimination of scavenging from these district once and for all.

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Sulabh Swachh Bharat | A GLOBAL PEACEMAKER

The boy, who recited Bhagavad Gita from the age of four, today combines deep spiritualism with an insistence on dialogue to end strife across the world

“We all have the responsibility of bringing peace to every nook and corner of the world. Unless every member of our global family is peaceful, our peace is incomplete,” says Sri Sri Ravi Shankar on why he has voluntarily taken up so many initiatives to bring peace across the world.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is one of the busiest men  in the country today. Flying in and flying out to try and work for globalpeace, talking to different warring groups, at home he has also been a catalyst in working towards solving the Ayodhya issue.
Even as the Supreme Court began hearing the Ayodhya dispute case, a delegation from Lucknow met Sri Sri in Bengaluru to find an “amicable solution” to the issue.
The six-member delegation — executive member of All India Muslim Personal Law Board Maulana Salman Husaini Nadwi, UP Sunni Central Waqf Board chairperson Zufar Farooqui, former IAS officer Anis Ansari, advocate Imran Ahmed, Maulana Wasif Hasan Waizi of Teeli Wali Masjid and director of Objective Research and Development Athar Husain — had a three-hour meeting with the Art of Living founder.
“We discussed various aspects of the dispute and how a consensus can be reached between Hindus and Muslims. Another round of meeting can be held in Ayodhya in March where seers and clerics will discuss the issue,” Athar Husain said.
Farooqui said, “The waqf board is ready for all kinds of negotiations, provided people from both sides are present at the table.”
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar’s motive is to end the issue as soon as possible and do so amicably.
According to Sri Sri, an out-of-court settlement would be the best solution to the dispute in Ayodhya and that he would talk to all stakeholders in this regard.
What one can achieve through friendship can never be done through conflicts, the spiritual leader has been stressing throughout in recent times.
With strong belief in the power of dialogue, he has brought to the table opposing parties in Iraq, Colombia, Sri Lanka, Kashmir, Northeast India and the Naxal groups.
This spiritual leader has the unique reputation of being able to engage with all sides of a conflict leaders, victims and rebels.
‘My vision is a violence-free, stress-free world’, says this humanitarian ambassador. He doesn’t mind taking risks and does not hesitate going to dangerous places to tame the lions in their own dens.
Sri Sri Ravi Shankar is the founder of the ‘Art of Living Foundation’, one of world’s largest humanitarian, non-governmental organisations.
He propagates his ideologies through the countless ‘ashrams’ and Art of Living institutes all around the world.  Ravi Shankar is a multi-faceted social activist and his humanitarian initiatives include conflict resolution, trauma relief and poverty eradication.
He feels that deep meditation and a breathing technique known as the ‘Sudarshan Kriya’, once directly integrated in one’s daily life, will calm the mind and bring about positivity and vigour. He reaches out to over 370 million people around the world through personal teachings, social interactions, public events and Art of Living workshops.It has been a fascinating journey.