India to become 'open defecation free' by 2012 (Diversity Alert)

New Delhi, March 26 (IANS) Come 2012 and it will be rare to see people defecating in the open in India. So claims Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, who went on to say that the country was set to achieve 'open-defecation free' status under the government's Total Sanitation Programme (TSC).

'Open defecation is slowly losing popularity in rural India, and the government is doing all efforts to end this for all by 2012,' Singh told IANS.

The TSC was started in 1999 by the rural development ministry to ensure sanitation facilities across the country.

'The growth in the use of toilets from 22 percent in 2001 to 38 percent of the population in 2006 (till February) is an encouraging sign. The government has raised the grant for construction of household toilets from Rs.625 to Rs.1,500.

'While the central government would now bear 70 percent of the expenditure as against 60 percent earlier, the rest will be shared by the state government and the family,' he said, on the sidelines of a campaign on the need to wash hands.

'In Haryana and Punjab people are not poor, what they lack is awareness. They have trucks, tractors and four-wheelers but no toilets - this is really surprising. However, states like Gujarat and Maharashtra are doing well,' he said.

Singh said that plans were afoot to extend the TSC to all districts of India by the end of 2007-08 financial year.

Speaking about other sanitation measures taken by his ministry, he said a water surveillance campaign worth Rs.2.68 billion had been launched to train five people in every panchayat (village clusters) to monitor water quality in villages.

'Currently 468 blocks in India have water surveillance laboratories. Under the new campaign, efforts would be made to extend the facility to every block.'

'We have reports of excessive fluoride, nitrate and presence of other chemicals in water. The authorities are working to provide quality water.'

Clubbing in general terms, entire continents even, is what makes the internet, and these anonymous forums, so popular.

Yes, we have a brilliant person on another post who thinks that all people who live in Asia look like the Chinese: namely all the Jews and Arabs and Iranis and Indians and Russians are all Chinese looking and they aren't Caucasians (according to him)

Put those Indians in california back into India and see how far they'll go WITHOUT US companies.

You have people like the founders of Wipro, Infosys. Then the old business houses like the Bajajs or the Tatas. Agreed that Indians in the US have more opportunities to improve their lot (that's what make the USA the greatest country in the world -- anyone with gumption, talent and hard work can live the dream), but they are able to do things in India as well. No different than the Chinese in China.... Chinese OUTSIDE China like in Taiwan, Singapore, the US, Hong Kong (and don't tell me SAR is a part of the mainland when it's so only in name) do fantastically.

It's actually pretty sad that two lands with such intrinsic trading skills and communities like India and China took up communism and socialism. Anyway that's going to change.

B.T.W., I'm based in Hong Kong now for the next few months and it is WOW -- more futuristic than ANY European or American city. I think the future will bring more co-operation between the two giants and China will transition to democracy, slowly. If China doesn't, it WILL face incredible pressures and will collapse. The upper leadership I think doesn't have much control over the rural party leadership, but when Hu leaves, the next generation may inaugurate more reforms -- remember that China has been trying to reform since 1840

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