Koppal: Not too long ago a “whistling” campaign was held to embarrass people stepping out to defecate in the open in Koppal , but now a gram panchayat member is doing the opposite, touching the feet of villagers to appeal to them to give up the unhygienic practice.
Mr Srinivas Karturi, who presides over the Sriramnagar Gram Panchayat in Gangavati taluk, hopes his novel campaign will persuade people to build toilets in their homes.
His morning begins with rushing to people of all castes and religion, heading for the fields to defecate and falling at their feet to stop them from going any further. “I am prostrating before you to plead that you build a toilet,” he tells them.
If they are younger than he is, he simply does a namaskara and talks about the need for toilets. “I do this from 6 am to 8 am," he explained. To make sure that those who promise to build toilets stick to their word, he offers them some financial aid.
“I tell them I will provide the toilet bowls at my own cost and I do,” he said.
Of the 2,100 houses in his gram panchayat,only 441 have attached toilets, but sadly not all of them are used. “Even educated people are not ready to have toilets in their homes. And people who already have toilets, are not using them. Instead they prefer going out to answer nature's call," Mr Karturi regretted.
Koppal district, which is on the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan map, hopes to be open defecation-free by 2016-17. Currently, 1.3 lakh households have no toilets here. A senior officer of the Zilla Panchayat said the campaign was given up a while ago but had now been re-launched for making Gangavati taluk open defecation-free by October 2016, and the other three taluks by March 2017.
