Kalinga Seneviratne*
ORISSA, India, Oct 30 2007 (IPS) – When Gram Vikas, one of India s largest non-government organisations (NGOs), began work to uplift rural Adivasi (tribal) communities across this eastern Indian state, it started by building toilets.
In 1992, after a Gram Vikas study found that 80 percent of deaths in rural Orissa could be traced to water contaminated by faecal matter, the NGO launched a rural health and environment programme. This situation has arisen because of an abysmal attitude towards the disposal of human waste, said Gram Vikas executive director Joe Madiath.
We thought water and sanitation was where everyone can be united. So we got into water and sanitation on 100 percent basis for co-habitation, he said.
Adivasi communities make up more than a quarter of Orissa state s 36.7 million population. They live in the hilly areas, surviving on a subsistence economy of farming and cattle rearing.
The programme to uplift and empower them, MANTRA (acronym for Movement and Action Network for Transformation of Rural Areas) not only begins with water and sanitation but also goes into areas of livelihood for landless labourers through through building skills especially in masonry, both for men and women, explained Madiath, who has won international recognition for his work.
In March 2006, Gram Vikas won the inaugural Kyoto World Water Grand Prize at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico. It claimed the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship in 2007.
A 2001 census found that 78 percent of India s rural households do not have toilets. Madiath s organisation has since built about 2,700 toilets in 361 very poor and mainly tribal villages across 21 districts in Orissa. He hopes to increase this figure within the year to 10,000.
In urban areas there is some system of sanitation, though not in slum areas, said Madiath. But in the rural areas, where the people have to find their own sources of water, these sources are polluted because of defecation habits.
In rural areas you can t talk of quality water or protected drinking water without speaking of sanitation, he further explained.
The founder of Gram Vikas argued that successive governments have ignored the water and sanitation needs of rural people. Governments bring water from far away to the cities, he pointed out. But very little is done to rural areas. They say rural people do not need running water, they do not need tap water. The tube wells are there.
Madiath believes that where governments have failed, NGOs like his should come in as a water midwife to raise the hygiene and health standards of the rural poor.
Earlier it was thought that open defecation was okay as long as people don t dirty the water and they do it far away. But people have to clean up after defecation and they come closer and closer to the water source. That pollutes the water, said Madiath.
Through MANTRA s integrated approach to education, community mobilisation and action, the Adivasis are empowered to uplift their communities guided by a belief that all people deserve to live with dignity.
It is a Gram Vikas principle that if not all the households in a community join in, no one will get a toilet. It is because the project involves a strong hygiene-led health goal.
Madiath said it will take a lot of persuasion and attitudinal change for people used to open defecation to use a toilet that is enclosed within four walls. We believe that the entire community has to buy into this process, he said.
Once the community agrees to take part, each family contributes 1,000 rupees (25 US dollars) to a corpus fund. The very poor contribute less while the richer ones may give more. The people bake their own bricks, and bring in the clay and sand and other materials, while Gram Vikas provides the cement, the door and the toilet pan.
Because the organisation trains boys and girls in masonry, there is no shortage of skilled workers and local residents build the toilets under the NGO s technical supervision.
There was training given and we learnt it in two-and-a-half months, said Sumitra Mollick, an 18-year-old Adivasi woman from Rampay village. We learnt this to get better wages. We have better chances of earning money now, added her 16-year-old sister Janaki.
Each toilet includes an adjoining bathroom with tap water. The residents also have a tap in the kitchen.
Life has changed a lot because we have toilets and a bathing room, said Thunni, an elder of Kanheiput village. When we get up in the morning, we don t have to go to the jungle or look for a place to defecate. We don t have to go and fetch water. Life is easier.
To provide tap water at a lower cost, Gram Vikas devised a water system that uses gravity flow . A well is dug in the hills and, through gravity, water flows into a tank on a tower in the villages below. Pressure from the overhead tank pushes the water into each household. This makes the system more financially viable for poor villages.
Every family contributes one rupee a day or 30 rupees (75 cents) a month, explained Krushno of Kanheiput village. We have 10 houses and that makes it 300 rupees a month that would help fund any repairs or maintenance to the system.
But it is a different story at nearby Tamanna village, which is located in a valley and has a well at ground level. It needs electricity to pump water into the tank. Electricity expenditure and other small costs come to anything between 400 and 1,000 rupees (10 to 25 dollars) a month. We collect 23 rupees (57 cents) per house and we have 84 houses here, said Banamali, the village head.
The government has a scheme to meet the electricity costs of supplying water but we don t receive it, he complained. We are also taxpayers. Why don t we get it?
Madiath pointed out that in cities, whole battalions of engineers and technicians keep the water and sewerage system functioning at taxpayers cost . But in rural areas, the NGOs and the community have to spend for this.
In Gram Vikas villages, more than 85 percent of waterborne diseases have been reduced because of sanitation facilities, he said.
When the government has to spend 1,000 to 2,000 rupees (25 to 50 dollars) every year year on each family member to treat diarrhoea, then it is much more costly not to subsidise water and sanitation services for the rural villages, said Madiath.
(*This story is being distributed by IPS Asia-Pacific under a communication agreement with the Asian Media Information and Communication Centre, in Singapore, which produced it.)
