Sikkim fought hard to win fight against open defecation

Thiruvananthapuram: It was not a cakewalk for Sikkim to achieve 100% ‘Open Defecation Free’ (ODF) status. The state was the first in India to bag ‘Nirmal Rajya’ award in 2008. Though it achieved 100 per cent sanitation in 2008, a baseline survey conducted in 2012 revealed that there were close to 10,000 households which did not have toilets, according to Benu Gurung, additional district collector of Namchi South District.

The number of houses had increased. Many toilets were insanitary and had to be converted to a covered pit sewage system. Then there were tenants whose landlords would not allow them to make permanent structures, lest the former lays a claim on the property. They set an ambitious deadline, as soon as the Centre announced the Swachh Bharat Mission and its aim to achieve ODF status by October 2, 2019.

“Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited the state in January 2015, to declare Sikkim the first fully organic state. We wanted the PM to enter into a 100% ODF state. We switched from campaign mode to mission mode,” says Gurung. Gurung and Roshni Rai, additional district collector of Pakyong East District, are in town to attend a workshop on ‘Solid and Liquid Waste Management’.

Another major challenge was sourcing material from Siliguri in West Bengal increasing the cost when the fund was limited to Rs 12,000 per toilet. The authorities started encou-raging people to contribute locally available materials like timber, bamboo mesh and stone. Many made Ikra structure, the traditional Sikkim buildings made with bamboo. Gurung says that the state resorted to a carrot and stick policy.

“The government issued a notification in which households without a functional toilet were denied benefits like trade licence, pensions and scholarships,” she says. The notification, they hope, will be one of the reasons which help sustain the ODF status. The next challenge is solid waste management. “We are once again going into mission mode,” says Gurung.