A Woman in Bihar divorced her husband after he failed to construct toilet

Patna: A 25 year old woman ended her four year old marriage after her husband failed to construct a toilet in their house. The incident took place in Bihar’s Vaishali district.

The woman Sunita Devi had been asking her husband to build a toilet but all her requests were ignored by her husband, she said. Her husband is small time labourer and vegetable seller in Paharpur panchayat of Vaishali district.

“Going out in the open is an insult and with no alternative left I decided to leave. I have been requesting him since I walked into his house but he didn’t get it constructed”, Sunita Devi said.

Women venturing out to defecate are a harsh reality in a country where Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swach Bharat campaign is being lauded and appreciated. Reports indicate that despite all the awareness campaigns there are around 82 per cent household in rural Bihar where there is no toilet and women have to wait till evening to go out to relieve battling dangers of wild animals.

After Prime Minister in his Independence Day speech last year vowed to completely eradicate the open toilet system from the country, an initiative was taken by the ministry of Urban department to give every household without toilet Rs. 4000 to construct a toilet with an additional incentive share from the state government under the Swach Bharat Mission.

Later under a 15 year old Nirmal Bharat Scheme Prime Minister Narendra Modi led NDA government at the centre had announced that each house without toilet should get more that Rs. 10,000 to construct toilets. In the year 2011 Sunita Devi’s in laws village was declared as a Nirmal Village by the central government with an initiative to eradicate open defecation but no official ever visited the village.

“My wife’s complains are genuine, she had been asking me to construct a toilet in our house but due to lack of money and other resources I couldn’t get the toilet constructed”, Sunita Devi’s husband said.