It was in August 2016 that Vimala Kadam came upon a pitiable sight. A line of elderly men and women were waiting on one side of the Mudhol-Nippani state highway near Umarani village to cross the road and head to the field to relieve themselves. Without a second thought, she went ahead and met some of the villagers and the panchayat development officer to begin a campaign for toilets in homes.
Kadam , who pledged to make Umarani open-defecation free (ODF), is now just 100 toilets short of her target. The village in Chikkodi taluk, with a population of 4,500, has 800 toilets and Kadam, a second-year BA student, is a village champion of sorts.
The gram panchayat was ready to provide funds under the Swachh Bharat Mission to build toilets, but the families were not. Most of them had a mental block to building toilets in their homes, adjacent to the gods they worshipped. They preferred to go to the open fields on the outskirts of the village.
Read more of this in a report published in Times of India....
