Daphne D'Souza

A sanitation project initiated by Tata Motors with support from the Jharkhand government and Unicef has transformed the healthiness quotient of a group of villages near Jamshedpur

An apology for a road links Dorkasai, near Jamshedpur, with the Tata Motors township 16km away, but the fortunes of this sleepy hamlet are far more solid – and the good news has all to do with improved sanitation.

The Dorkasai panchayat, spread over six villages and serving a population of 787 families, has witnessed a lifestyle change over the last three years thanks to a hygiene project initiated by the Gram Vikas Kendra (GVK), an organisation set up by Tata Motors, and supported by the Jharkhand government and the United Nations Children's Fund (Unicef).

The introduction of a new system of sanitation, prominent features of which are tube wells and toilets, has resulted in Dorkasai turning a new leaf and, in the process, reaping the benefits of healthy living. The scheme has been such a success that Dorkasai is well on its way to becoming the first panchayat in Jharkhand to be totally sanitised under the central government's Nirmal Gram Yojana programme.

The healthiness quotient in Dorkasai was pathetic before GVK, the district administration and Unicef joined hands to undertake a water and sanitation project there in 2001. The panchayat had just two toilets and both were in disuse, with the locals preferring to use open spaces or the jungle cover available nearby to answer nature's call. Today that situation has changed so much that GVK can proudly state that every Dorkasai household uses toilets.

This transformation was not easy. Building the toilets was one thing; getting the villagers to use them was quite another. GVK enlisted the help of two self-help women's groups to convince the villagers that good sanitation was an essential component of healthy living.

Dorkasai now has a water-storage facility built into every toilet and all the tube wells in its village are functional. The toilets built for the middle school and the four primary schools in the area are kept clean by the kids studying there. A children's committee has been formed to ensure that's the way things stay, and groups of kids have, by rotation, the responsibility to keep for their toilets clean.

Dorkasai's inhabitants say there has been no case of diarrhoea in the panchayat over the past two years. That's one reason why Dorkasai has become a case study of how to implement and sustain sanitation projects in rural areas.

The panchayat — and its sanitation project — came under the microscope at a workshop organised jointly by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) and Unicef in Jamshedpur last year. Members from Sida and Unicef, along with delegates from Jharkhand, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra, where similar sanitation programmes have been undertaken or are in the process of being started, took part in this workshop.

Having learned the lessons of good sanitation, Dorkasai and its residents are now looked upon as exemplars of hygiene and healthy living by people from far and wide.

Uploaded in June 2004