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A Look At The 2019 Sanitation Awards: From Toilet Robots To Women Masons
The categories covered everything from finance and businesses to government work, NGOs and media
New Delhi: For NDTV-Dettol Banega Swachh India, building a cleaner and healthier India is not just about spreading awareness. It is also about recognising the people and organisations working on the ground to make a difference. The ISC-FICCI Sanitation Awards 2019 celebrated some of these efforts. Presented by the India Sanitation Coalition (ISC) and FICCI, the awards honoured work in areas such as building toilets, improving sanitation and ending manual scavenging. The categories covered everything from finance and businesses to government work, NGOs and media.
Download The Full Report: ISC-FICCI Sanitation Awards 2019
Best Corporate Initiative in Sanitation: Small, Medium and Large
GenRobotic Innovations developed Bandicoot, India’s first manhole-cleaning robot. The company has introduced the “Mission Robohole” in eight municipalities and rehabilitated 87 manual scavengers as robot operators. Tide Technocrats has designed and operated thermal faecal sludge and septage treatment plants in Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. The company has supported more than 170 towns and cities, and its three treatment plants have impacted around 1.5 lakh people.
ITC Limited, through its Adarsh Habitation Programme and Mission Sunehra Kal, has built 33,950 household toilets and 44 community toilets, while around 1.71 lakh children have benefited from school WASH programmes. About 95% of project villages and wards have been declared open-defecation-free. LIXIL India promotes SATO, a low-water toilet solution designed to improve sanitation in rural areas. Its products use less than 500 ml of water per flush and help prevent odours and insects.
Saraplast, through its Toilet Integration (Ti) centres, has converted old buses into clean and safe sanitation hubs for women in Pune. The centres provide toilets as well as facilities for the sale and disposal of female hygiene products.
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Best Engagement Model in Sanitation by a Social Enterprise
Eram Scientific developed eToilet, India’s first automatic, unmanned electronic public toilet. The system uses electrical, mechanical, web and mobile technologies, along with IoT-based monitoring, to keep toilets clean and properly maintained.
Lootel, developed by Dot Box Conception, is an IoT-enabled smart toilet cafe in Indore. It is a completely self-sustainable solution for a public toilet.
Best Financial Accessibility Model in Sanitation
IDFC First Bank developed a rural sanitation loan to help households build toilets and improve sanitation facilities. By January 2019, around 1.05 lakh loans had been issued. Annapurna Finance’s SWASTH programme provides loans for household water and sanitation facilities across several states. The programme also supports businesses involved in toilet-pit cleaning, sanitary products, water ATMs and biogas plants.
Best Communication in Sanitation
The Wire launched Grit in May 2017 to focus on manual scavenging, sanitation and their links with caste, gender, government policies and social discrimination. The initiative has published nearly 90 reports, opinion pieces and videos covering the lives and challenges of manual scavengers and the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. In Chennai, WIN NEWS ran a campaign showing problems with public toilets. It also showed successful waste-management solutions, such as converting waste into organic manure and biogas. The channel aired more than 50 ground reports on public toilets and followed up on the issues raised.
Best Non-profit Engagement Model in Sanitation: Urban & Rural
In Trichy, WAVE Federation formed Sanitation and Hygiene Education (SHE) teams with women from local slums. The teams simultaneously work to increase awareness of sanitation and hygiene within their communities. Around 200 SHE teams manage nearly 200 public conveniences, directly benefiting about 400 women. In Tamil Nadu, SUHAM Trust worked to eliminate open defecation by promoting individual toilets and behaviour change. The project used Behaviour Change Communication to educate communities about safe sanitation and encourage toilet use.
Special Recognition Award for Government
The Rani Mistri Initiative was started by the Jharkhand State Livelihood Promotion Society (JSLPS) in 2016 under the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin to involve rural women in building toilets. Women from self-help groups were given 3-day to one-week masonry training so they could work as trained toilet builders, known as Rani Mistris. So far, around 55,000 women have been trained, and they have built about 3.5 lakh individual household toilets. Together, these efforts show how innovation, community action and government initiatives can play a key role in building a cleaner and healthier India.
NDTV – Dettol have been working towards a clean and healthy India since 2014 via the Banega Swachh India initiative, which in its Season 10 is helmed by Campaign Ambassador Ayushmann Khurrana. The campaign aims to highlight the inter-dependency of humans and the environment, and of humans on one another with the focus on One Health, One Planet, One Future – Leaving No One Behind. It stresses on the need to take care of, and consider, everyone’s health in India – especially vulnerable communities – the LGBTQ population, indigenous people, India’s different tribes, ethnic and linguistic minorities, people with disabilities, migrants, geographically remote populations, gender and sexual minorities. In a world post COVID-19 pandemic, the need for WASH (Water, Sanitation and Hygiene) is reaffirmed as handwashing is one of the ways to prevent Coronavirus infection and other diseases. The campaign will continue to raise awareness on the same along with focussing on the importance of nutrition and healthcare for women and children, fight malnutrition, mental well-being, self-care, science and health, adolescent health & gender awareness. Along with the health of people, the campaign has realised the need to also take care of the health of the eco-system. Our environment is fragile due to human activity, which is not only over-exploiting available resources, but also generating immense pollution as a result of using and extracting those resources. The imbalance has also led to immense biodiversity loss that has caused one of the biggest threats to human survival – climate change. It has now been described as a “code red for humanity.” The campaign will continue to cover issues like air pollution, waste management, plastic ban, manual scavenging and sanitation workers and menstrual hygiene. Banega Swasth India will also be taking forward the dream of Swasth Bharat, the campaign feels that only a Swachh or clean India where toilets are used and open defecation free (ODF) status achieved as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2014, can eradicate diseases like diahorrea and the country can become a Swasth or healthy India.