No Toilets For Dalits In Open Defecation-Free Maharashtra Village

Aurangabad : Declared open defecation-free a year ago, the nondescript Pokhri village in Aurangabad is home to some other backward caste families who claim they are forced to defecate in the open as they are yet to receive funds for building toilets.

Ganga Sai, who is partially paralysed and lives in the outer part of Pokhri, only wishes to have a toilet in her house which would prevent her from relieving in the open.

The village was declared open defecation free under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) last year but she and some other backward caste families living in a colony at one of the ends of the village claim they are still deprived of toilet facility.

"The upper caste farmers have built toilets in their homes but we cannot afford to built on own," says Sai, who belongs to SC community.

Sarpanch Amol Kakde, however, dismisses these claims saying about 47 families living in that colony have actually encroached over government land and are not considered to be part of the village and counted among its families.

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Pokhri has the distinction of being open defecation-free, a feat few of the villages in the Marathawada region of Maharashtra enjoy. However, some SC/ST residents blame gram panchayat of caste-based discrimination in building toilets.

Under SBM, a target has been set to make the country open defecation free by October 2, 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

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To meet the target of the mission, state governments and authorities concerned are working at a fast pace to meet the numbers, making them somehow lose the objective of the mission, according to experts who spoke at a FEJI UNICEF organised workshop on water, sanitation and hygiene.

Kakde says that the village, which is 6 km from here, was declared open defecation free on October 2, last year. It also has the honour of being ISO 9001: 2008 certified and a recipient of Nirmal Gram Award.

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The village, which has 80 per cent literacy, has amenities like RO water filter, solar powered street lights and CCTV surveillance near the gram panchayat building which also houses an Anganwadi.

The village head says 260 families of about 1,300 people live and every household has individual latrine which are connected to 40-45 soak pits and further to a drain outside the village.

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However, Dalits living in an outer pocket of the village contradict his claims.

Pandernath Namdeo Balerao, who lives in the outer part of the village, which abruptly starts after the concrete road ends at the gate of Zila Parishad's upper primary school, claims they are deprived of basic facilities like drinking water leave alone toilets.

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Mr Balerao, a watchman, said his family has been living here for generations but lack the facility of toilet.