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Human Rights abuses in Clean India Mission |
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by Ananya Singh | 29-04-2018 01:11
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India's Union Territory - Puducherry's poorest families entitled to free rice will no longer get the grains starting from the end of May 2018 unless they can produce a certificate that their village is open defecation free and cleaned up, the union territory's Lieutenant Governor Kiran Bedi has ordered in a move. The contentious order comes months after a UN sanitation expert Leo Heller had taken a dim view of such attempts to arm-twist people, saying the Swachh Bharat ( Clean India Mission) mission's "open defecation free" programme should not be "human rights free". The Clean India Mission is a campaign in India that aims to clean up the streets, roads and infrastructure of India's cities, smaller towns, and rural areas. The objectives of Swachh Bharat include eliminating open defecation through the construction of household-owned and community-owned toilets and establishing an accountable mechanism of monitoring toilet use. Run by the Government of India, the mission aims to achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing 90 million toilets in rural India at a projected cost of ₹1.96 lakh crore (US$30 billion). The mission will also contribute to India reaching Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 (SDG 6). Mr. Heller, a visiting top sanitation and water expert of the United Nations, or UN, had criticized the program for not addressing the "human rights principles" in its implementation. He had also questioned the Government's claims that the massive effort to build new toilets would end manual scavenging. "The right to water and the right to sanitation are distinct but integrated rights. Just as water and sanitation services go hand in hand, the rights to access water and sanitation must be addressed as a package," Mr Heller said. He had also drawn attention to the "aggressive and abusive practices" by authorities to deliver on targets, pointing to instances where officials had cancelled ration cards or cut power supply to people who did not have a toilet at home. "The Indian Government's emphasis on constructing toilets should not overshadow the focus of drinking water provision for all and it should not involuntarily contribute to violating fundamental rights of others," Mr Heller had said. "In its third year of implementation, now is a critical time to replace the lens of those glasses with the human rights lens," Mr Heller had said. The only point here, in my opinion, is environmental cleanliness and stakerholdership are inevitable for sustaining balance in the ecosystem and thus, driving towards sustainable development BUT efforts in the same regard should not come at cost of depriving the bare minimum facilities extended to those who are already living a hand to mouth existence. |
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2 Comments
I'm so glad that you've found India lovely ! Hope you visit us again soon ! *_*
Posted 05-05-2018 11:35
This is so cool Ananya. I visited india and loved it very much and io believe that this is a great casmpaign)))
Posted 03-05-2018 18:00