Recently, with the declaration of Nagarkot as an open defecation free area, the percentage of households with toilets in Nepal officially reached 63. But that still leaves more than a third of the country’s household without toilets, with enormous ramifications. Open defecation make them more vulnerable to diseases like diarrhea, cholera, and gastritis. [break]
It also entails higher risk and difficulty for children, elderly and the disabled, especially if they have to go far away from home to defecate, especially at odd hours. The effects may be even more far reaching in a country like Nepal where open defecation is practiced at sources of drinking water like Sundarijal. That the practice of open defecation continued to exist until recently in Nagarkot, a popular tourist destination only 20 km from the capital, indicates the magnitude of the problem.
Many innovative tactics were used by social workers to expedite villages’ journey to “open defecation free” status. In many villages, children are recruited to boo and whistle at people defecating openly, hoping to shame them into stopping. They also plant flags at open defecation sites to draw attention to the extent of defilement. In Chitwan, an NGO pays one rupee to anyone who uses their toilet.
Social workers faced many obstacles, chief among them being that toilets are costly. Besides, though people scraped money to build homes, many did not think toilets were as essential as kitchens and bedrooms, so long as they had the option of open defecation. They countered these problems by raising awareness of the issue and collecting money from NGOs, government, and donations from citizens to build toilets. Yet, they met with resistance from unexpected sources. Some groups took their efforts as an attempt to control their behavior, and insisted on defecating wherever they pleased. Some villages had to go to the length of issuing sanctions on basic necessities like water to get the obstinate groups to cooperate.
No other social initiative has garnered such all-round support in recent times as the campaign to eradicate open defecation. The fact that ending open defecation is a vital step in achieving the seventh millennium goal of environmental sustainability, which lists safe drinking water and sanitation as targets, has been instrumental in focusing government attention in the sector. In Salkot, a village in Western Surkhet, villagers have to produce a “sanitation card” when applying for any services from the VDC. The card verifies that the house has a toilet and that the residents have pledged against open defecation. In Kalikot district, toilet is mandatory for obtaining a citizenship. In many other villages, government authorities repeatedly ask citizens about toilets when they come to the office for documents.
As a result, in the last twenty years Nepal has made enormous progress. Until 1990, only 6 percent of households in Nepal had toilets, which increased to 25 percent in 2000. According to the latest census, Nepal has managed to increase the percentage to 62 in the last ten years. There is a reason to hope that the good work will continue and Nepal will reach its millennium development goal of safe drinking water and sanitation for all, including eradication of open defecation, by the 2015 deadline, which will be a rare light at the end of a long and dark tunnel that the country finds itself in.
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