Eureka!

The dream of the Late Shri Rajiv Gandhi, the former Prime Minister of India, of making rivers like the Ganga and the Yamuna free from pollution from sewage is being brought to reality.

Our task is to make a Great India of ordinary people.

– Rajiv Gandhi

Tribute to Shri Rajiv Gandhi

For the last nearly three and a half decades, Sulabh International Social Service Organisation has been engaged in the field of sanitation, developing technologies for treatment and disposal of human waste and simultaneously working to effect social reform by trying to abolish scavenging, which is a demeaning task, carried out by a class of people, the lowliest of the low and treated as untouchables prior to the Independence of the country. While experimenting with technology for treating human waste from public toilets in non-sewered areas, Sulabh came up with a design incorporating a human excreta-based biogas plant and a mechanism which well serves the treatment of human waste from high-rise buildings, hospitals, hostels, etc. The process fully recycles human waste and the treated effluent can be used as
fertilizer. The gas emanating can be used for the purpose of cooking, lighting mantle lamps and warming oneself in winter. With an attached effluent treatment device, the BOD of the effluent reduces to less than 10 mg/l, fit for horticulture and to be discharged into a water body.

These innovations have realised the dream of Shri Rajiv Gandhi who had envisioned cleaning up of the sacred rivers – the Ganga and the Yamuna. Shri Rajiv Gandhi believed that there was a national answer to each national problem. Of the many major programmes, launched by Shri Rajiv Gandhi, abolition of scavenging, setting up community toilet facilities, environmental protection and clean living were important ones. The dreamer put into action the related Action Plans; to cleanse the rivers which in the words of Nehru flow in their “varying moods” as the seasons change and with which “history and myth and traditional song and story attached to them through the long ages” have “become a part of their flowing waters”; “the Ganga… beloved” of the people of India” round which are interwined her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats”, “smiling and dancing in the morning sunlight” and “a narrow, slow and graceful stream in winter; broad-bosomed almost as the sea; a symbol and a memory of the past of India, running into the present, and flowing onto the great ocean of the future.” …It was Rajivji’s initiative which saw the launch of the grand plans. Sulabh, through its public toilets, coupled with biogas plant and the attached SET device leading to purification of the effluent, is associating itself with efforts to fulfil the dream of Rajivji, which he so passionately believed in. With minor modifications, the design, developed by Sulabh can achieve the larger purpose and the aim of the Ganga and the Yamuna Action Plans. Sulabh is confident that there is a possibility of fulfilling their noble objective. Our efforts reflect our commitment and this is the best tribute Sulabh can pay to Rajivji.