Valsad, Dang, Dahod, Chotta Udepur (Gujarat): Under a mango tree, a one-minute walk from his house, farmer Kishanbhai Mawi pointed to the government-built, Indian-style squat toilet that he, his wife, 21-year-old son and 16-year-old daughter never used.
It was easy to see why.
The toilet is a ceramic hole in the ground, without walls, running water or connection to a sewer. It is connected to a cess pit, but that has been of little use. It has been 24 months since the toilet was built gratis for them, but Kishanbhai and family do what they have always done: Squat in their field.
“We have been planning to finish it, but I have not been able to save enough money,” said Mawi, “Sometimes we cover it and use it as a bathroom, but it is largely useless.”
Such unused toilets are common across Jogvel, a village in the Valsad district in southern Gujarat. In at least four districts of his home state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship programme, the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission, or SBM, is plagued by unusable toilets, a lack of water to flush them and widespread resistance to changing the open-defecation habit.
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