Schools suffer TOILET TRAUMA   

Its been 6 years that Gobar Times Green Schools Programme (GSP) has witnessed participation from schools from every corner of India. Unlike the previous years though, this year, 65 per cent of the participating schools were from rural areas. If we divide the population into government and public schools – 83 per cent belonged to the former category. In fact, rural government schools ruled GSP 2011-12. And the overwhelming feedback was on water and related uses. The findings showed that there is just not enough water in our schools. All of them, urban and rural, face water crises – for drinking, for cleaning, and for toilet use.

So on an average a person requires 75 litres of water per day. Of which 20 per cent is required for toilet use.

    Looking at the Loos   

We found that many rural government schools as well as a few urban public schools are barely managing their drinking water requirement. There is a serious shortage of drinking water taps and functional toilets in rural schools. Management admitted that the schools have infrastructure (toilets), but they lie unused due to lack of water supply. Its real tough to maintain clean toilets without adequate water, right?

So on an average a person requires 75 litres of water per day. Of which 20 per cent is required for toilet use.

    Only on paper?   

A recent study by the United Nations Children’s Fund’s (UNICEF’s) Water, Sanitation, Hygiene (WASH) programme reveals that nearly 30 million school children in the country still have no access to toilets, even though schools have made significant progress in providing the facility in recent years. The UNICEF study and GSP audit data showed that while some
regions are ahead of others, the scenario is rather bleak.

But as per government data, great strides have been made to provide adequate sanitation facilities to schools in India, with officials being aided by external expertise. We tried to find the missing links with the help of Kabir Vajpayee, Advisor (Infrastructure), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.

Vajpayee believes that there are some critical points right at the planning stage. “Apart from the Ministry of Human Resource and Development (MoHRD) at the central level, the State Education Board and other state level departments play a vital role in the management of government schools. So synchronisation among the various concerned departments at the central and state levels is a complicated and time-consuming affair which delays the whole process,”he says.

Solutions, says Vajpayee, cannot be universalised across the board. While there are various technologies and design options available for sanitation, different solutions are required for the geographically diverse regions of India. Hence, not one but many solutions are needed. Every time new technology is introduced, users must be told how to ‘use’ it! And then how to maintain it, or else it will remain unused and dirty.

    But who will clean the loos?   

Keeping in view the scale of infrastructure in government schools, the allocation of salaries toward support staff is another daunting prospect. Where does that leave the schools? Well, thinking about how to clean up! Now, with the Right to Education Act coming into force, we sure hope things are about to change. And these changes would address not just building of toilets in schools across the country, but also ensure that they can be USED by ALL.

The Right to Education mandates minimum norms and standards of school sanitation infrastructure. But we cannot afford to forget the number of schools operating in India. Investment in imroved models requires equally formidable research work and approvals. A single solution, moreover, may not work in every situation. Can sanitation find local solutions?