Total Sanitation Campaign - Changing Face of Rural Burdwan

Burdwan District of West Bengal is considered to be both the ‘Granary of Bengal' and the ‘Ruhr of Bengal'. But the sanitation system in the villages were (and still are in many cases) non-existent with open defacetation being the predominant practice. As a result incidence of communicable diseases is widespread, and there are deaths due to Gastro-instentinal problems and Snake-bites. To improve the situation, the Government of West Bengal, along with a few NGOs had taken up the task of 'TOTAL SANITATION' for the district through the District Committee or Zilla Parishad. The programme involves promoting and cajoling villagers to install and use Sanitary Latrine in their own courtyard which are cheap and subsidised by the Govt. Progress of the programme is encouraging with two blocks of the district with about 60,000 households being already covered. Progress is on in other areas also. The Dept of Economics at the University of Burdwan, was entrusted with the duty of evaluating the progress of the work independently. The paper reports the survey findings. The initial situation, the programme, costs involved, and the evaluation results are focused upon