Express View on Bindeshwar Pathak: Thank You Mr Pathak

In the late 1960s, the Gandhi Centenary Committee in Patna sent a young volunteer to work amidst the Dalit community in Bettiah. The volunteer Bindeshwar Pathak braved humiliation and ridicule from members of the Brahmin caste he was born into to spend three months in a village studying the socio-economic conditions of the scavenger community. Despite his familiarity with the realities of caste atrocities, this was an eye-opening experience. Those were times when open defecation was a common practice, and not even the elites in large parts of the country were exempt. Septic tanks were costly and only very few towns had good sewerage networks. Public toilets were virtually non-existent. The task of cleaning the night soil fell on the Dalit community. Pathak, who had joined the Gandhi Centenary Committee influenced by the Mahatma’s message of restoring the dignity of the scavenger community, made it a mission to replace the bucket latrines. Out of that quest was born the Sulabh toilet which does not use sewers or expensive treatment plants. It uses a fifth of the water used in conventional toilets, allows easy switching between pits to enable composting and can be customised to local conditions. Most importantly, the innovations of Pathak, who passed away on Tuesday aged 80, freed many people from the scavenger community from the task of cleaning latrines. This was the use of technology for social upliftment at its most elementary level.

Pathak was a sociology graduate — not an engineer. Officials of the Bihar government had doubts about his project. It took Pathak nearly five years to convince them of the Sulabh toilet’s efficacy. In 1973, the Arrah municipality gave Pathak Rs 500 to construct two toilets in the compound of its office. Word spread. In 1974, the Bihar government sent a circular to all local bodies to take Sulabh’s help to convert bucket toilets into two-pit pour-flush toilets. Municipal Corporations gave land and financed the construction of the toilets but did not agree to pay for their maintenance. Pathak had to ask users to pay for public facilities. An earlier attempt to make people pay for public toilets — by the colonial state — had failed. But people quickly saw the merit of the clean, odourless and environment-friendly Sulabh toilets. By 1980, 25,000 people were using Sulabh public facilities in Patna alone. Sulabh became the implementing agency for building and maintaining toilet blocks in educational institutions. This was a seminal contribution because the absence of latrines in schools would force a large number of girl students to drop out.

Sulabh has converted dry latrines into two-pit pour flush latrines in more than 1,700 towns and built over 1.5 million toilets. Pathak has been feted nationally and internationally, including the Padma Bhushan and the Stockholm Water Prize. The government recognised Sulabh’s contribution to Swachch Bharat by awarding Pathak the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2016. His mission was, indeed, the forerunner of the government’s flagship programme. The greatest tribute to him would be to eliminate manual scavenging completely.