In India we have already witnessed the dramatic impact that ordinary citizens can have. Bindeshwar Pathak’s invention of the dry toilet – the Sulabh shauchalya, built to function with little water and a selfcleaning pit – has done more than any bans on discrimination in helping put an end to the sordid work of manual scavenging that the Dalit Bhangi caste had been forced into for centuries.
Besides governments, there are many other non-profit organizations seeking to alleviate some of the world’s problems caused by poor sanitation. Through the WTO, I met another impressive social entrepreneur, Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the Sulabh International Social Service Organization. Sulabh builds affordable, eco-friendly and hygienic toilets in rural and urban India. It is the largest nongovernmental organization in India. More than 10 million people use a Sulabh toilet daily. Unfortunately, this is literally a drop in a cistern for a country with a population of 1.1 billion people and where 65 per cent still defecate in the open.
Sulabh International showed me a good example during my recent visit to New Delhi. This organization has proved how effective small-scale solutions can be and how they can be extended all over India within a short time span. Thousands of ‘Pay and Use’ public toilet-cum-bath complexes and more than a million pour-flush latrines in private houses have been built (and are maintained) and they are used by more than ten million people everyday. By doing so, Sulabh has restored human dignity and given a new future to thousands of untouchables.
