Breaking Barriers Setting Benchmarks by Sulabh International Social Service Organisation

BREAKING BARRIERS SETTING BENCHMARKS

SULABH The Sulabh International Social Service Organization founded by Padma Bhushan Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak is nationally and internationally acclaimed agency working in sanitation, hygiene, health and community development. In last four and half decades, its contribution to the changes taking place in the sectors has not only been path-breaking and revolutionary, but also deep-rooted and enduring. With trans-national presence and massive human resource base of 50,000 plus social activists, engineers, scientists and sector wise development professionals, it undertakes projects and programs with commitment, honesty and accountability. Its development interventions have brought in tangible results in the lives and material conditions of millions and millions of people. It has earned several coveted national and international awards for its catalytic social development program and actions. Of late, it has launched a highly ambitious â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Clean Body Campaignâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; that encompasses elements of WASH programs like provision of water and sanitation facilities; enabling environments; and changing social behaviour. The program, over and above WASH, also includes training and advocacy in health and sanitation.

TEACHERS AND STUDENTS CLEAN TOILETS

Advocacy in health and hygiene of entire body including cleaning of private parts, hands and surroundings in a culturally sensitive manner. Setting up facilities to create low cost locally produced affordable feminine hygiene products to eliminate the use of unhygienic cloth (Sulabh has a pilot model for making affordable feminine hygiene products for provision in schools at its New Delhi Centre)

IN SULABH PUBLIC SCHOOL

Training in Yoga and use of indigenous medicine to cure day to day ailments

Sulabh International Social Service Organisation (NGO in General Consultative Status with the United Nations Economic and Social Council)

Sulabh Bhawan, Mahavir Enclave, Palam-Dabri Road, New Delhi - 110 045 Tel. No.: 011-25031519, 25031518: Fax No.: 011-25055952, 25034014 Email: Sulabhinternational.org / sulabhinfo@gmail.com, sulabhinfo1@gmail.com Websites: / www.sulabhinternational.org , www.sulabhtoiletmuseum.org

www.xtremeonline.in # 9311156526

Advocacy in schools and with women for maintaining hygiene in the house

Total Care of Menstrual Hygiene Sanitary Napkin Production, Storage and Proper Disposal

Snapshots: Sulabh Public School

Padma Bhushan Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Ph.D, D.Litt. Founder, Sulabh Sanitation & Social Reform Movement (Progenitor of Sulabh Public School) â&#x20AC;&#x153;Over the years, the Sulabh Public School (SPS) has proved that a school cannot just be a mirror of the stillness or the dynamism of community, society and nation. Rather, if driven and managed with vision, plan and action, it can also show a mirror to communities and systems of governance to undertake course correction measures for moving forward in a balanced way so that future turns happy and vibrant. In that sense, a socially responsive, environment friendly and sanitation secure school is a precursor to positive changes in national lifeâ&#x20AC;?

Dedicated to Honâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ble Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi for his vision and cherished desire to have well - maintained toilets in each and every school of India

PREFACE HISTORY WHISPERS INTO THE EARS OF THE TIME ETERNAL…. Imagine the indomitable spirits of the Neanderthals or the Homo Sapiens, our nearest ancestors, or listen to the silent breeze of now ravaged Indus Valley Civilization or to the Vedic hymns of sanity and purification or attempt to understand the philosophical canons of Maharshi Patanjali and Gautam Buddha or remember the time, life and mission of Mahatma Gandhi or plunge into the pages of the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement spearheaded by unorthodox social revolutionary Bindeshwar Pathak, one finds that the cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation play paramount role in the lives of people and communities, and influence and impact social-cultural and political discourses of the time. When Mahatma Buddha Embraced Scavenger in Shravasti? In Savatthi (modern day Shravasti in state of Uttar Pradesh), there was a scavenger called Sunita. He lived a very miserable life, even barely earned enough to feed him* He used to sleep on the roadside as he did.

not have a house to go to. He saw other people enjoying themselves but he could not mix with them because those people called him an outcast. Whenever a higher caste person went on the road Sunita had to run and hide so that his shadow did not fall on them. If he was not quick enough, he would be scolded and beaten. One day, as he was sweeping a dirty, dusty road after scavenging, he saw the Buddha with thousands of followers coming towards him. He got nervous and finding no place to hide he just stood, joining his palms in respect. The Buddha stopped and spoke to poor Sunita in a sweet, gentle voice saying, “My dear friend, would you like to leave this work and follow me?” Nobody had ever spoken to Sunita like this before. His heart was filled with joy and his eyes with tears. “O, most venerable Sir, I have always received orders but never a kind word. If you accept a dirty and miserable scavenger like me, I will follow you.” The Buddha ordained Sunita and took him along with the other monks. From that day forth no one knew what Sunita’s caste was, and nobody treated him with disgust and cruelty.

*Sunita is a female name. But, we have found that ‘he’ has been used in the place of Sunita in several texts and treatise on Buddhism. Therefore, we have retained the same.

When Mahatma Gandhi Became His Own Scavenger? When Gandhi was just 12 years old, he faced a situation that was indeed an eye-opener for him. A sweeper called Uka was condemned to do scavenging in the town. Once he touched Uka and it infuriated his otherwise highly religious mother Putlibai and she made him take bath several times. A very young Gandhi, though very obedient to his mother, could not tolerate it. He argued, “Uka serves us by cleaning dirt and filth, how can his touch pollute me? I shall not disobey you, but the Ramayana says that Rama embraced Guhaka, a Chandal (a caste considered untouchable). The Ramayana cannot mislead us.” Putlibai could find no answer for his argument. In his 20s, when Gandhi reached South Africa, he got exposed to many realities and learnt many things. One of the critical things that he learnt was scavenging. His friends there called him the great scavenger. Gandhi himself replied, “Everyone must be his own scavenger.” He even extolled his wife Kasturba Gandhi to be her own scavenger. At his ‘Phoenix Ashram’ in Johannesburg, it was mandatory for inmates to clean their own toilets. After returning to India, Gandhi attended the Congress session in Calcutta. He was appalled seeing the horrible sanitary condition as some delegates had used the veranda in front of their rooms as latrines. When he asked those delegates and the volunteers about that, he got a terse reply, “This is not our job, this is a sweeper’s job.” What Gandhi did then was catalytic. He asked for a broom and cleaned the entire filth. In fact, he stirred the consciousness. Years later, the Congress volunteers started forming squads for cleaning and many the Brahmins worked as scavengers.

During Haripura Session of the Congress in Gujarat, nearly two thousand teachers and students were specially trained for doing the scavenging. Gandhi had very sharp and focused views on cleanliness and untouchability. In his Ashram, everyone had to clean toilets, including Indira Gandhi and foreign visitors. Among foreigners was one Nilla Cram Cook, a young American woman, daughter of a writer, who had come to India to study Indian societal dynamics. She spent some time at the Gandhi’s Ashram at Sabarmati and Wardha and also engaged herself in the cleaning of toilets. Later she penned moving articles on her experience. Yet another was Madeline Slade, daughter of an Admiral of the British Navy. She got influenced with Gandhi, renounced her affluence and came to India to live in Gandhi’s Ashrams. Her transformation into Meeraben, the name given to her by Gandhi himself, began by cleaning bucket latrines and emptying chamber pots. In short, the life of Mahatma Gandhi was crowded with political activities, but he never lost sight on his social change agenda. He always believed that securing national independence was only half the story of the mission and it was equally necessary to reform the deformed social order marked with institutionalized social discrimination based on caste and occupation. He found in untouchability a serious ‘neuro-social malignant’ which had the potential to kill the innards of human civilization. Cleanliness, for him, was a composite value, well thought out strategy and lifelong mission.

Thus Gandhi Spoke….

When Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak Made Tryst With Destiny to Redefine It?

“Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. It is a sad thing that our school boys [And girls] look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt.”… ‘Young India’ journal of September 1, 1921

Just 20 years after the martyrdom of Mahatma Gandhi, the Gangetic plains of northern Bihar saw emergence of a young visionary who later became an unorthodox social –cultural revolutionary fulfilling the unfinished dreams of the great Mahatma. Like Mahatma, he also lived in troubled times marked with social division, tension and conflicts. He faced personal indignation and humiliation as well as social backlash because of his ‘holy sin’ to assert the importance of dignity in labour and dignity of labour. He empathized and mingled with the manual scavengers, lived and toiled with them through carrying night soil on his head along with them. It sent shockwaves to the community of orthodox Brahmins and other sections of so called upper caste people that were basking in their perceived glory of being powerful and dominant at the cost of depraving and subjugating others.

“I am a firm believer in the educative value of manual work. Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect. One may develop a sharp intellect otherwise, too. But, then, it will not be a balanced growth but an unbalanced, distorted abortion. It might easily make of one a rouge and rascal.”…. ‘Harijan’ journal of September 8, 1946 “If you become your own scavengers, you will make your surroundings clean. It needs no less courage to become an expert scavenger than to win a Victoria Cross.”….interacting with school students 6

As a ‘restless solution seeker’ in his 20s, he evolved himself as a ‘solution maker’.

He internalized almost everything that was glorious in the realms of knowledge and philosophy, culture and religions, science and technology, and laboured hard to positively negate those which were defiling, detrimental and dangerous for a clean, graceful, equitable and vibrant India. He understood untouchability in all its ugly forms and decided to take on it with strategized actions from both fronts of social attitudinal change action and sanitation security He took up the issues that had a great potential of social reform and nation building and hence unleashed and pioneered a movement whose central core was/is ‘Sanitation for Social Equity, Change and Progress’. This unique movement of post-independent India is known far and wide as ‘Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement’ and the Man on his ‘Mission Salvage’ is no other than Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak. In last 45 years, the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, under the everexpanding aegis of Sulabh International

Social service Organization and its several affiliates and branches, has reached many milestones scripting numerous inspiring stories of liberation, empowerment, growth and assertion of hitherto suppressed class and communities of manual scavengers and other marginalized people. Though this book does not intend to capture the entire programmatic gamut, curves and contours of the movement, it just gives a glimpse of one of those and that is How School Can Successfully Be An Animating Space, Institution and Gateway to Make Community and Nation Clean, Green and Happy. The following pages focus on the Sulabh Public School situated in the national capital Delhi and bring to the fore three discerning features of the school that become a reference point and role model for other schools in the country. At a time when our nation has embarked on fulfilling the mission of ‘Swachh Bharat, Swachh Vidyalay’, this book also aims to generate more momentum towards achieving the mission goal. 7

Sanitation is Spiritual Cultural Foundation of our Progress

Sulabh Public School At a time when thousands of governmentrun schools fare poorly on two most vital parameters of educational health, i.e., social equity and teaching-learning quality, and a large number of private schools tend to pit equity and quality against each other and often compromise on the basic essentials of education, the Sulabh Public School (SPS), offshoot of the Sulabh International Social Service Organization, stands out to assert that it is the Institution with a Difference Committed to Epistemological and Normative Principles and Goals of Educational Excellence, Social Cohesion and National Resurgence.

Brainchild of Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, well acclaimed social ecologist by vocation and unorthodox social revolutionary by conviction, the Sulabh Public School came into existence in Delhi in 1992. Dr. Pathak dreamt and pledged to develop it as a center which could bridge social, economic and gender divisions, and neutralize the poisonous effects of social exclusion in educational processes. Besides, he aspired to evolve the school as an incubating center for practical, but nuanced understanding of environmental sanitation.

Dr . Pathak conceptualized a policy framework for the school which gave centrality to Mainstreaming of the children of erstwhile manual scavengers with those of so called upper castes to restore human rights of the former and ensure their growth at par with the latter. Cross-curricular integrated learning focusing equally on learning of formal subjects and of work/vocational education to promote both formal educational attainment and skills based entrepreneurship development.

Understanding of the vital linkages of environmental sanitation with education, health, economic growth and overall development. Evolving an educational model having potential to be replicated across cities and towns as well as reference model to be learnt from by other schools in the country.

Recognized by the Directorate of Education, Government of Delhi and affiliated to the Central Board of Secondary Education (CBSE), this co-ed school provides education up to tenth standard. The present strength of the school is 475 students. It has marked features that distinguish it from other schools: The ratio of the students is 60 per cent Balmikis ( read children of untouchable manual scavengers) and 40 per cent from the upper and the intermediate castes. Balmiki students avail complete fee waiver and free of cost uniforms, books and stationary. The school has its own grandeur, serene environment and vast resources including well-equipped science laboratory, mathematics lab and library with more than 5000 books on different subjects. Popular associated wing of the school is the Sulabh Vocational Training Center. At an average, it trains 200 students every year in different vocational trades having ample employment opportunities. Here also 60 per cent students are from socially marginalized and economically weaker sections.

The Sulabh School Sanitation Club is yet another defining attraction of the school. It is basically a childcentered and girls-led endeavour to bring about positive social transformation in schools by empowering girls through hygiene education. It has adequate infrastructure and facilities, especially Menstrual Hygiene Education and Management System. Here women teachers and girl students take total command over the processes including peer group education and awareness and sanitary napkins production, proper storage, and disposal by highly efficient smoke-less and odour-less incinerator.

Burning EGO Feeling DIGNITY IN LABOUR Practicing DIGNITY OF LABOUR Breaking Social Barriers Of CLASS CASTE RELIGION GENDER

Role Model for Other Schools Teachers and Students clean their own toilets The Sulabh Public School, in its educational programs and practices, accords top priority to total negation of untouchability, the worst form of which is manual scavenging. The Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi inspired Dr. Pathak to do all he could to eradicate the scourge of manual scavenging from the soils and minds of India. Dr. Pathak has devoted his life to this mission and he motivates others to join him in his mission salvage. No wonder, the teachers and the students of the SPS understand untouchability in all its ugly forms and take on it with strategized actions from both fronts of social attitudinal change action and sanitation security. They treat sanitation, health and hygiene on continuum in their day to day practice and learning as those have critical bearings on educational outcomes and future growth of children. They believe that the enlightened and alert children and teachers act as catalytic agents to bring positive and enduring changes in communitiesâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; behavior.

Dignity in Labour: Teachers and Students Together

Here in the SPS premises, the teachers and the students realizes well the far-reaching importance of the Gandhian thoughts about cleanliness and demonstrate a unique model of organic solidarity while cleaning their toilets together. They practice what Mahatma had said,â&#x20AC;&#x2122;Everyone must be his own scavengerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. Every class is assigned one day of the week when they sweep and clean the classroom floors and the toilets. It acts brilliantly. Since teachers and students together clean the toilets and the classrooms, they ensure to keep those clean and also learn to use the common facilities with responsibility. In this process, they break the social barriers of class, caste, religion and gender, burn their residual ego and respect labour, and develop the humility to recognize the importance of the most menial of jobs and to honour those who perform them. Such an act puts in place a practical narrative of morality, ethics, dignity of labour and citizenship.

The children learn to respect their own surrounding and this learning builds their personality and in turn leads them to respect public spaces and broader environment in which they have to live and grow. This pedagogic potential can go a long way to fulfill the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well as the mission of ‘Clean India: Clean Schools’ provided schools follow suit with strong will and sense of purpose. Dear Great Physicist Mr. Stephen Hawking Just the other day, I was reading your quote on net….it reads, “ In my school, the brightest boys did math and physics, the less bright did physics and chemistry, and the least bright did biology. I wanted to do math and physics, but my father made me do chemistry because he thought there would be no jobs for mathematicians”. I’ve immense respect for you, but I’m sorry to say that both of you were unlucky. In my school, I am the brightest boy and I want to do sanitation and social medicine, and my father does also believe that these two shall fetch good money and wealth.

Professor Stephen Hawking Centre for Mathematical Sciences, Wilberforce Road, Cambridge, CB3 0WA, United Kingdom

Regards Yours truly Shivam Class- VII Sulabh Public School New Delhi - 110045

TOTAL CARE OF MENSTRUAL HYGIENE SELF - CONFIDENT & ASPIRING GIRLS 14

Girls of Sulabh Public School engaged in producing sanitary napkins

NIGHTMARE IS OVER HEALTHY BREEZE IN LIFE “How did you feel when it occurred first?” It was an abrupt teaser to Seema, now a Class IX student, when almost three years back a Menstrual Hygiene Management Volunteer at the SPS had asked her about her first bleeding. Seema then preferred not to reply, she kept mum. The volunteer kept pursuing to let her speak her mind and dispel the obnoxious secrecy veiled around menstruation, a biological process that is often called the onset of womanhood. After a month, she finally opened up and shared the following:

…..” I had no idea about it till I bled the first time. One night I woke up with pain thinking that I had some bowl problem. But, soon felt somewhat wetly and saw blood on her underwear. I was traumatized….I thought I had some major internal disease…My mother and father along with two of mine kind sisters had gone to a different town to attend a function of one of our relatives…. Fortunately my 20 years old sister-in-law was there in the house….I rushed to her and started crying. She consoled me and gave me cotton cloth to put beneath the bleeding spot. When mother returned and came to know about it, she told me not to tell anyone 15

that I had started having periods and she was very clear that keeping it secret was for my own good” ”The initial six months were traumatic….my periods used to last for six to eight days. I often faced shortage of clean cloths. I used to throw to used cloth out in the open and did not wash it for reuse.

The rest is fresh…..refreshing story that I keep telling to young girls in the school….”

I had cramps and rashes occasionally in my private parts. I had never used any sanitary pads…..The nightmare came to

Now Seema is also a Menstrual Hygiene Management Volunteer

Insanitation affects everyone, but girls are often the most at risk. Lack of access to basic sanitation provisions, such as clean and safe toilets and menstrual hygiene management spaces, badly impacts girls’ attendance and retention in schools, their health and selfesteem.

Vending Machine is installed. This machine is designed to provide sanitary napkin at any time when one requires. The machine works automatically on the insertion of a coin. It saves the embarrassment of seeking napkins in the peer group or from school authorities anytime of the day to meet the menstrual needs. Besides, the teaching-learning processes break the taboo surrounding menstruation and impart information and knowledge on biological processes, sanitation, and sexual and reproductive rights. Currently the school has 25 Menstrual Hygiene Management Volunteers.

The infrastructure arrangements and facilities at the SPS adequately take care of these needs of puberty entering girls and their right to bodily integrity, health and dignity. The SPS administration understands that the central practical dimension of menstruation is the need to manage it hygienically and with privacy/dignity. In the school’s girls’ toilet, Sanitary Napkin. 16

an end when one day I attended a session in the School Sanitation Club and saw some senior girls making sanitary pads in the club and some others putting some odd pads in the machine/incinerator…..

Securing Present and Future 17

SCHOOL AS SOLUTION MAKER Production and Disposal of Sanitary Napkins

The

menstrual hygiene education and management is dismal across schools in India. The girls and women throw their sanitary products and cloths wherever they can like pit latrine, garbage dump or water body in a reckless secret manner. This practice generates several hazards, such as water pipe blockage, waste overflow, disastrous water and soil contamination and pollution, and spread of serious diseases. The Sulabh School Sanitation Club has put in place a system wherein such things do not occur. It has developed and is maintaining a Napkin Production Unit, Storage Corner and Incinerator.

At Production Unit, sanitary napkins are manufactured in a sterilized and hygienic environment with girls wearing uniforms, gloves, caps and masks. The young entrepreneurs use cotton derived from cellulose fibres (wood pulp) which is safe bereft of any chemical particles. The pads prepared by girls are superbly safe in comparison to the high- cost commercial pads that contain absorbent polymers. Moreover, if not disposed off or burnt properly, the commercial pads can take hundreds of years to decompose leaving behind a trail of environmental hazards.

Girls putting coins in dispensing machine, getting sanitary pads and incinerating it after use

On daily basis, at least 100 low cost and user-friendly pads are prepared by girls and stored in sterilized standing desk like cabinets. Such pads do also get transported to the Sanitary Napkins Vending Machines that the Sulabh has installed at many other places. The disposal system is also very effective. The used products are collected in covered trays and brought to the disposal unit where those are put in user-friendly and manually operated incinerator. The emission control system along with door for firing and removal of ashes are also environmentally appropriate as they do not spread any foul odor and prevent air-borne spread of bacterial diseases. The ash also does not cause any contamination or pollution, rather if mixed with the soil, it nourishes plants and boosts yields.

FASCINATION

VISITORS @ SULABH PUBLIC SCHOOL

& CHARM

Her Royal Highness Princess Mathilde of Belgium with the students of Sulabh Public School, New Delhi

His Excellency Mr. Timothy J. Roemer, Ambassador of United States of America to India and his wife Her Excellency Mrs. Sally Roemer, interacting with the children of Sulabh Public School

Extract of a motivational story told by the US Ambassador Mr. Timothy J. Roemer to the students at the University of Notre Dame, Graduate School, Indiana, U.S.A. on May 21, 2011 …. “To motivate you, let me tell you a story about …… toilets!

Mr. Timothy J. Roemer Ambassador of United States to India

India is a country with many inspiring people. There is, of course, Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation. His teachings of tolerance really are the key to the success of democracy in India and he has influenced civil rights movements around the world including in the United States. There is Mother Teresa, who lived and worked in India although her legacy now touches the lives of children, women, and the poor all over the world. There is Rabindranath Tagore, the first nonEuropean to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. But there are also many inspiring people, lesser known to the world, like Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak. Dr. Pathak, although from a very high caste, knew at a very young age that there was nothing wrong with touching the untouchables. He has dedicated his life to restoring the human rights and providing dignity to scavengers, which is the bottom-rung caste in India responsible for cleaning up human waste. To do so, he used technology to develop a safe and environment-friendly toilet to replace pit latrines, reducing the need for scavenging and improving sanitation and hygiene for both rural and urban poor. He provided education to the children of scavengers, helping to break the never-ending family cycle of scavenging. He provided alternative economic opportunities so that women no longer have to clean toilets for the rest of their lives to provide for their families. All this has helped tackle a bigger problem – breaking down the caste system in India. …..As you leave Notre Dame today, I hope you will remember the story of Dr. Pathak. He did not start out to change the world. He started out to help some scavengers in a few villages in Bihar, a small state in the north of India on the Nepal border. As you start out today, you do not have to change the world overnight. But I encourage you to try to make a difference. As you walk out these doors and leave this campus for your final time as a student, follow the counsel of President John Quincy Adams, who said, “March then with firm, with steady, with undeviating step, to the prize of your high calling. Consecrate above all, the faculties of life to the cause of truth, of freedom, and of humanity.” 25

Miss Universe 2012 Olivia Frances Culpo with the students of Sulabh Public School at New Delhi.

His Excellency Mr. John Fredrik Reinfeldt, Prime Minster of Sweden and his wife Her Excellency Mrs. Filippa Reinfeldt with the students and teachers of Sulabh Public School

His Excellency Mr. Jean M. Deboutte, Ambassador of Belgium to India at the morning assembly of Sulabh Public School

Her Excellency Ms. Genet Zewide Ambassador of Ethopia with the children of Sulabh Public School

Students from University of California observing production of sanitary napkins at Sulabh Public School on August 5, 2015

Prof. Rajmohan Gandhi, grandson of Mahatma Gandhi and his wife Mrs. Usha Gandhi alongwith the students of University of Illinois, USA with the children of Sulabh Public School

Honâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ble Mr. Hoang Dan Mac, Party Secretary, His Excellency Mr. Ton Sinh-Thanh, Ambassador of Vietnam and members of the Vietnamese delegation with the children of Sulabh Public School

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan at New Delhi on 2nd October, 2014.

SWACHH BHARAT ABHIYAN Officers from Foreign Service Institute (FSI) visited Sulabh campus for one day “Community Work” on February 21, 2015.

Honâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ble Shri Thaawar Chand Gehlot, Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Government of India, with the children of Sulabh Public School

Students of the Sulabh Public School doing PT

Toilet Cleaning: Sulabh Public School