Banks adopt govt schools for building toilets

 Herald, 30 Sep, 2014

PANJIM: Two banks – the Indian Overseas Bank and Corporation Bank – have joined efforts of the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ cleanliness campaign being propagated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide separate toilet facilities for boys and girls in all government schools. 

 

Goa State Infrastructure Development Corporation has also taken up the project in addition to the two banks. 

Education Director G P Bhat told Herald that the two banks have adopted schools and would construct toilet facilities as well as repair the damaged ones. “Those schools, which are in dire need of toilets or repairs, have been prioritised… Schools without second toilet or where toilets are dysfunctional are also included in the list,” he said, maintaining that all government schools have toilet facilities. 

 

Recent figures by the Department of School Education and Literacy of the Ministry of Human Resource Development had indicated that out of 961 government schools across the State, 163 schools are without boys’ toilets while another 22 are without girls’ toilets. Moreover, toilets for girls in 31 schools and toilets for boys in 28 schools are un-usable. Bhat promised that the construction of the toilets would be completed within six months. “All the schools will have separate toilets for boys and girls,” he claimed. 

 

The only hurdle the department faces is that about two-to-three schools situated on rented premises cannot have this facility. “This doesn’t mean these schools are deprived of toilets. We have already made arrangements for toilets some distance away from the school,” he explained. 

 

The department now intends to write to all 65 aided schools which do not have toilets. These schools will have to build toilets at their own cost or rope-in corporates for the project. 

 

The prime minister during his speech on August 15, 2014 had called upon parliamentarians to utilize MPLAD fund for constructing separate toilets for boys and girls in schools within one year. 

Central funding for toilet construction inadequate: Naithani (Utterkhand)

The Pioneer. Dehradun.  26 September  26, 2014 

State Potable Water and Sanitation Minister Mantri Prasad Naithani said that the amount allocated for construction of toilets under Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) is inadequate and that the State Government will raise this issue with the Central Government. Naithani said this at the launch of the National Sanitation Awareness Campaign at the Rajiv Gandhi Navodaya Vidyalaya in Dehradun on Thursday.

Responding to the request made by Raipur Block Pramukh Beena Bahuguna for raising the budgetary allocation for construction of toilets from Rs10,000 to at least Rs25,000 each, Naithani acknowledged that the sum was inadequate with Union Minister Nitin Gadkari asking a secretary whether the sum was enough without getting a reply in a recent meeting.

Addressing the Panchayat representatives, he said, “I appeal you to pass a proposal and the budgetary allocation made in it for toilet construction will be presented to the Centre by the State to elicit action on increasing the amount.” Recalling his experience during school life Naithani said, “As a student I had gone to attend Vinoba Bhave’s camp at Wardha where nine out of 142 participating kids volunteered to clean the sewage pits of leprosy patients,” he said while urging the gathering to unhesitatingly clean garbage to keep the surroundings clean.

Recalling his experience in Uganda, the Minister said that the driver of the car he was travelling in stopped him from throwing a banana peel out the car window so that it could be dumped later in the bin. “We need to develop such civic sense. In Uttarakhand’s rural areas, those who can afford it have proper toilets but the economically weaker families remain without toilets,” said the Minister. Naithani also stressed on the importance of raising awareness on sanitation. Students will also be informed about sanitation in the school and various other activities will be held to spread awareness on sanitation and the need for toilets. The Minister later flagged off a vehicle for raising awareness on sanitation.

Addressing the gathering on the occasion, Swajal director, Sowjanya spoke on the importance of sanitation and the various health problems resulting from the lack of it. She said that essay writing, debate or painting competition would be held in 17,000 Government schools across the State as part of the sanitation programme. Students of the Rajiv Gandhi Navodaya Vidyalaya presented songs on the occasion while Ramlal’s group performed a puppet show on the subject of sanitation. Various public representatives and government officials were also present on the occasion.

Loo taboo: The past, present and future of toilet architecture

By Kieron Monks, for CNN   September 23, 2014 -- Updated 0910 GMT (1710 HKT)

London (CNN) In an era of porn star politicians, legalized marijuana trade and same-sex marriage, it might seem that our liberalism knows no bounds. But this idea runs aground at the door of the bathroom, a subject still abjured in polite society.

"Nobody knows better than me," laughs Professor Barbara Penner, Senior Lecturer at The Bartlett School of Architecture and a leading toilet specialist. "Everybody asks why I don't talk about Shakespeare or something nice. It's hard to talk about toilets in a serious or critical way."

But the author of Bathroom 2014 wants us to try, because she believes there is something deeply unhealthy about the way we perceive and relate to our most intimate facilities. In a new exhibition Toilets: Evolution or Revolution, hosted by Japanese manufacturer TOTO as part of the London Design Festival, Penner critiques the designs that have dominated the era, as well as exploring the possibilities of more progressive ideas.

"We tend to think of our model as normal and natural," says Penner. "An underlying aim of the exhibition is to make people think why a toilet looks the way it does, and how else it could look."

The collection of classic images shows the dominance of the modernist aesthetic over the 20th Century in the West, which the professor defines as: "white, functional and utilitarian...the toilet was a symbol of modernist values of hygiene and cleanliness, supposed to represent progressive civilization."

I believe toilets are the final frontier of taboo, says Barbara Penner, of the Bartlett School of Architecture. Penner contrasts this with ancient civilizations such as Rome, with its culture of communal bathing, and contemporary mores abroad, such as the Indian disregard for privacy. She highlights the futuristic designs of Buckminster Fuller, who envisioned a portable bathroom with inbuilt recycling features in his Dymaxion house.

The exhibition also charts the emergence of alternatives to the "hard, unyielding, standardized space" of modernists, which placed greater emphasis on pleasure and style, placing bathrooms on a par with other rooms of the house. From the soft shapes and warm colors that accompanied the 1960's sexual revolution, to the incorporation of technology in Sanyo's self-cleaning bath of the 1970's - subsequently adapted for nursing homes - innovation thrived in the post-war period.

Today, the modernist style has endured, but is being updated with technology advances that also change and personalize the experience, shown in Toto's display models of self-cleaning, germ-killing, temperature-controlled, resource-efficient "Cadillac" models. But to popularize a new concept requires cultural change that allows openness about the subject.

"It happened with sex and now I believe toilets are the final frontier of taboo", says Penner, who believes we have something approach a psychological disorder. "I would characterize it as schizophrenia. We lavish money on bathrooms, it's common for people to spend $25,000 on them...but in public they are supposed to be invisible."

An imperative to increase our engagement with our bathrooms comes from resource scarcity, which makes the 50 liters of potable water lost with every flush ever less affordable. Penner highlights California's drought, which has driven a movement to recycle toilet water for drinking, as an example of the need to move beyond "flush and forget".

Whether it is through low-tech, off-grid systems, closed-loop recycling, or luxurious experiences for the indulgent, new concepts for bathrooms are finally arriving to meet modern challenges. If only we could face them.