In Varanasi, officials tweak norms, families left with half-built toilets

In Sujabad, people bathe, wash clothes and utensils on Ganga’s banks. (Source: Express Photo/Renuka Puri)

Every evening, the ghats of Varanasi are hosed down with high-pressure pipes. On the other side of the Ganga, in the first village after city limits, the residents watch — and wait. In Sujabad, home to many of Varanasi’s daily-wage labourers and rickshaw-pullers, they still defecate, bathe, and wash clothes and utensils on the river’s banks.

The village is connected to the ghats by a bridge and a boat service, but for its residents, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which completes three years on October 2, is still “work half done”. Sangeeta Devi, 35, says she filled out a form for a new toilet — her first — from the government last year. Work started this June, and within a week she had her own toilet, she says. “But it is unusable. The septic tank is three metres away from my kitchen, and it does not have a cover. The toilet does not have a roof, either,” she says.

“We ran from one office to another to fill our applications and get the toilet. I have two daughters, aged 11 and 13, and two young sons. I don’t want them to go out in the mornings to relieve themselves. I have lived that life for 35 years, but why must my daughters go through the same struggle?” says Sangeeta. For now, Sangeeta has cut out the bottom of a cot to cover the tank “so that my sons don’t fall into it”. In August, the government declared that all 4,480 villages on the banks of the Ganga — in Uttarakhand, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal — had become Open Defecation Free under the Namami Gange project.

But in Sujabad, a dingy maze of two-room houses with 7-10 people in each, there are several families stuck with partially constructed toilets. Local officials say that under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, every household is entitled to financial assistance of Rs 12,000 to construct a toilet. The money is credited to the accounts of women running the households, they say. In October 23, 2016, Sangeeta got a letter from the district administration, stating that she could claim Rs 12,000 once she builds a toilet within a week of receiving the communication. As proof, according to the letter that she showed to The Indian Express, Sangeeta was asked to attach a photograph of the completed toilet.

But then, she says, she was told by the village pradhan that he would get the toilet built. The work began in June, is yet to be completed, and Sangeeta claims she has not got “a single rupee”. “The village pradhan got the material and the labourers. But those men left midway. If I had hired them, I would have ensured that the work was completed,” she says. Many other residents in Sujabad, who were not willing to be identified, alleged that the money is being transferred to the village pradhan who then engages private contractors to get the toilets built.

When contacted, a senior official in Varanasi confirmed that the “money and targets” were being given to village pradhans “so that the work gets done”. “The guidelines say that the money has to be directly transferred into the accounts of beneficiaries but it is not always the best idea. There is always the possibility that people who get the money will not use it to build toilets . We have given the money and targets to the pradhans in several villages so that the work gets done,” said the official, who did not wish to be named.

Sujabad’s pradhan Banarasi Lal insists that the village is open defecation free but then admits that work on toilets is “pending”. According to 60-year-old Lal, he got Rs 78 lakh to build 650 toilets of which 500 have been built. “Work on around 150 toilets is pending and will start soon. There is demand for 150 more toilets. There are many migrants living here in slums who are not permanent residents and voters. How can we get toilets made for them?” he says. Hira Sahni, 56, says the other problem is that some families spread across many homes are classified as one household.

“I live in this shanty with two of my sons, their wives and children. My eldest son lives with his family in another room nearby. But the pradhan said we were part of one household and so we got one toilet for 15 people. But even that is incomplete and the open pit for the septic tank is right next to where we cook,” says Sahni, a widow.

This leaves many residents of Sujabad with no other option, says Sangeeta’s neighbour Kiran Devi. “There are no community toilets and the ones that have been built are unusable. My husband is unwell and has not been able to go to work for several months. I don’t have money to even cover the pit they have left open,” says the mother of two.