Dr Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh movement is a man on a mission
Idon’t feel I a day older than 25, when I began working”, he says with a smile. At 71-plus years, Dr Bindeswar Pathak has enviable energy levels.”I am an optimist by nature. Also, when you love what you do, you can’t get tired.”
The founder of Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, Dr Pathak stumbled upon the road that became the mission of his life. That the mission he has taken on should be high on India’s list of priority, but that it is not so, makes it a challenge It isn’t easy to take up the issue of public sanitation in a country such as India that still has scavengers carrying human excreta even though it has been banned by law. There is also the question of half of India’s population not having access to toilets; in fact the situation stinks to such an extent that Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed the issue in his speech during Independence Day this year. “It’s a big problem. The strange thing, however, is that nobody wants to discuss it, find solutions, learn and discuss. I want to make sure it’s not a dirty word anymore,” he says.
Four decades of working in the sanitation field has been full of challenges and rewards. As Dr Pathak walks on, working on seeing every home in India have a toilet, everyone living with dignity, it’s interesting to look back at his journey.
THREE VISIONS
As the son of a Brahmin landlord family in village Rampur in Patna, the young boy’s life was pure joy. He walked to school with his friends, climbed trees to steal fruits, and like most of his classmates, played a lot, studied little. And just like we all have our turning points and epiphany moments, for young Bindeshwar, the first one came rather early. The first is a vision that still haunts him. and returning back. As children we all spoke of what we’d hear from our families. We’d talk of her work, how nobody could touch her, how it was important for her to stay outside the village. She had this strange look on her face. It was as if she was a shadow, like she almost didn’t exist.”
The young Bindeshwar often wondered why these rules existed, and who made them. The answers weren’t easy to come by. But the hunger to find them had taken birth.
THE FIGHT WITHIN
The young boy was growing up fast. After his schooling, he went to college and topped in the first year in college. But life had other lessons in mind. “I had to drop out of college because of a sudden financial crunch,” he recalls. Dr Pathak had to take up odd jobs. First he taught in a school, then shifted to the electricity board in Patna and, later, started an Ayurvedic medicine business. But none felt like anything that made him happy. Then, out of the blue, Dr Pathak was promised a job by the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee by his relatives. He began as a translator and then, as luck would have it, he got a project to find an alternative to scavenging in 1969. His first answer was a firm no. “I guess my caste was playing up in my head momentarily but I came around,” he says candidly.
Somewhere, the little boy inside him prodded on to see if he found any answers to his questions. “I stayed with the scavengers for a month. I tried to change their attitudes and also worked on mine,” he recalls. Soon a report on the Sulabh Shauchalaya (pourflush water seal toilets with twin pits for on-site disposal of human excreta) was ready. The Bihar government was yet to pass it when luck knocked on the doctor’s door once again. He had gone to Arrah where he met an old contact, who showed faith in Dr Pathak’s idea and asked him to construct some of these toilets. Soon after, an officer in Buqsar asked him to do the same. The technique proved to be a winner. The Bihar government approved it, too. And like they say, the rest was history.
THE BIG MOVE
Today, the Sulabh movement is a nationwide phenomenon and is spreading its wings internationally. The Sulabh Shauchalaya twin pit, pour-flush toilet system is in use in more than 1.3 million residences. United Nations HABITAT and Centre for Human Settlements have declared the technology a Global Best Practice, and it is recommended by the UNDP for use by more than 2.5 billion people around the world who don’t have access to basic sanitation facilities.
Dr Pathak looks back at it all with a sense of nostalgia. “When I founded Sulabh it was confined to the restoration of human rights and dignity of untouchables in Bihar and for that I developed the two-pit pour flush eco-friendly compost toilet technology and the success started from 1973,” he says, adding how he never thought the organisation will grow to such an extent that it will have an impact not only in India but the entire world.
Recognition is something he is familiar with. While Time magazine named him an environmental hero, Stockholm Water Prize, the Padma Bhushan, Indira Gandhi Priyadarshni Award and the International Saint Francis Prize for Environment are also some of the awards that he has received. “I don’t work for awards but they come along. Awards, to my mind, tell you that you are headed in the right direction.”
For him, it’s also nice to see some of his dreams being fulfilled. “Usually, a movement does not become successful during the lifetime of the person who initiates it, but I am happy and fortunate that I have been able to show the country and the world how we can solve the problem of absence of toilets in the house.”
DREAMING ON
That said, Dr Pathak is not the man to rest on his laurels. In fact his presence in the Delhi office (when he is not travelling) always causes a stir, thanks to the workaholic in him. “I have been trying to fulfill the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi, I don’t get tired. There is so much to be done.” he says.
What also sets Dr Pathak apart is the fact that he is constantly thinking of contributing to the society. So be it his work for the scavenger women, breaking the tradition of widows of Vrindavan playing Holi for the first time, the rehabilitation of the widows of Deoli Banigram Village in Uttarkhand after the June 2013 tragedy, or the launch of the “Toilet in Every Household” campaign in the village of Katra Shahadatganj in Badaun District of Uttar Pradesh after the unfortunate rape incident, Dr Pathak is always thinking ahead. “I want to bring a smile to everyone”, he sums up.