'Face powercuts, ration cuts and life in jail if you don’t build toilets’ - directs Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje’s.
The state government has been taking stringent measures to make Rajasthan Open Defecation Free (ODF) state since a long time now. Earlier the sub-divisional magistrate of a Rajasthan district issued a directive to residents that if they don't build toilets in their homes within 15 days of receiving notice from the authorities, their electricity supply will be cut.
“Even after several notices, the people are not taking the matter seriously. We have now decided to cut their rations and accessibility to NREGS if they still don’t stop open defecation,” Indian Express reported quoting an official. "Failing to build toilets can even land them behind the bars," he added.
According to a report, the ‘crackdown’ started after the state fared poorly in the Swachh Bharat survey earlier this year.
Following the dismal performance of the state, on May 23, then Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu expressed his disappointment to the public and directed the state authorities to act sensitively to deal with the problem of ‘open defecation’.
But the state government even after several efforts has not yet been able to make the state ‘open defecation free’ completely.
According to the reports, the some of the measures that are being taken recently are suspension of subsidised rations, denial of work under the MGNREGA, arrests, threats to disconnect electricity, warnings to take action under the Indian Penal Code (IPC) and imposition of fines.
The campaign against open defecation began as the 'Total Sanitation Campaign', which was relaunched as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan in 2012 and integrated into the wider Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission) in 2014. Also in 2014, UNICEF began a multimedia campaign against open defecation in India, urging citizens to 'take their poo to the loo.'
More than One billion people worldwide still practice “open defecation.” India alone has an estimated 52.1 per cent of people in rural India who choose open defecation compared to 7.5 per cent in urban India, according to a study by the National Sample Survey (NSS), accounting for more open defecation than any other country in the world.
