Abstract
By the end of the Millennium Development Goal's target year, 2015, India had been declared as a country, which has made moderate progress in terms of improvement in basic sanitation provision for all. Yet open defecation is still a regular practice of a significant proportion of the population in both urban and rural areas. The Indian government has been trying to address this problem for the last three decades through different programmes. However, though the effort is laudable, in reality, the countrywide situation is not so praiseworthy. Lack of sanitation provisions affects people in different ways with different intensities along the lines of class, gender, age, disability, and marginality. In Darjeeling city, due to lack of proper sanitation facilities, a significant portion of the population uses public toilets, which are less in number compared to the demand. People face a variety of difficulties and hurdles in using public toilets, and as a result, continue to practice open defecation during the night and early morning. Among the users, women and adolescent girls suffer more than the others. Moreover, in this city, a significant portion of the population faces acute water crisis during the dry months. This empirical study tries to explore the different ways through which women and adolescent girls are affected by the lack of safe sanitation facilities within the house premises. The article also argues that lack of sanitation provision should be considered as a matter of violence against women and adolescent girls because the situation makes them vulnerable to the risk of being violated or sexually abused.
Highlights
The water of sufficient quality and quantity, and hygienic sanitary practices are the pre-conditions to a healthy life and the foundation for socio-economic growth (World Health Organisation [WHO] and The United Nations Children's Fund [UNICEF], 2006; Minh and Hung, 2011; Vedachalam and Riha, 2015)
Many projects have been launched by the Indian government to improve basic infrastructure including water and sanitation over the past three decades, such as Integrated Development of Small and Medium Towns (IDSMT) in 1979-80; Integrated Low cost Sanitation Scheme (ILCS) in 1980; different projects under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) in 2005; and the latest Clean India Campaign (Swachh Bharat Abhiyan), though the real picture has not yet changed to a satisfactory level
Questions of class and gender will be taken as the basis of discussion in the present study. This empirical study tries to explore the different ways through which women and adolescent girls are affected by the lack of sanitation facilities within the house premises
Summary
The water of sufficient quality and quantity, and hygienic sanitary practices are the pre-conditions to a healthy life and the foundation for socio-economic growth (World Health Organisation [WHO] and The United Nations Children's Fund [UNICEF], 2006; Minh and Hung, 2011; Vedachalam and Riha, 2015). ‘600 million Indians defecate in open space; 130 million households fail to access drinking water, and no cities of India receive piped water and electricity supply 24X7' (Bhattacharyya, 2014: 2). In this context, Sulabh International, an India based civil society organisation has been working since 1970 amongst the disadvantaged population with building toilet facilities. Questions of class and gender will be taken as the basis of discussion in the present study This empirical study tries to explore the different ways through which women and adolescent girls are affected by the lack of sanitation facilities within the house premises.
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