Hubli: He’s a whistleblower of a different kind. Gadag Zilla Panchayat executive officer, S B Shettennavar, has been visiting villages brandishing a stick and blowing on a whistle to shame people into giving up defecating in the open and build toilets in their houses instead.
All staff of gram panchayats too have been ordered to carry out the stick and whistle campaign, which seems to be paying off as 43,000 toilets have been built in the district in merely 20 days since it began.
The Zilla Panchayat CEO came up with the innovative campaign after exhausting all other methods like street plays, folk songs and even appeals through loudspeakers to the villagers to build toilets. When an offer of a Rs 12,000 subsidy to every family for building a toilet too did not persuade many to give up defecating in the open, he formed male and female teams and sent them to villages where the practice was most common, armed with sticks and whistles.
Panchayat development officers (PDOs), anganwadi and ASHA workers and school teachers too have been roped in to reach out to the villagers. “We are carrying the sticks to protect ourselves as our staff have been attacked in the past and we are blowing whistles to embarass villagers defecating in the open and encourage them to build toilets,” Mr Shettennavar explains, adding that his staff will also go door-to-door and issue the work orders on the spot for building toilets by offering a subsidy under Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan.
The Bidar Zilla Panchayat, which has estimated that around a lakh families have no toilets in the rural parts of Gadag district, has set itself a target of building at least 85,000 toilets within the next three months.
