Elkurthy Haveli village sarpanch B. Soujanya wakes up much before the village wakes up and accompanied by drummers and her office staff goes round the wild places around the village.
Her arrival alerts the villagers who are out to answer nature’s call. It took one year for her to discourage the villagers from open defecation and get habituated to using the Individual Sanitary Latrines (ISL).
Speaking to The Hindu, she said that of the 1,063 houses in the villages, over 500 houses did not have ISLs when she was elected three years ago. During the last one year, she took it up as a challenge and using the Swachha Bharati Abhiyan scheme of Central Government, she got 512 ISLs constructed.
“Now every household has one ISL but people did not stop going out to answer nature’s call owing to old habit. I am forced to go round the village outskirts during dark hours with my staff beating drums and blowing whistles. Now our village is totally free from open defecation,” she said with a glee.
District Collector Prashant Jeevan Patil, who was enthused at the commitment of sarpanch, sanctioned ₹20 lakh for development programmes.
Geesukonda MPDO V. Sai Charan said they motivated several villages in the mission. On their part, they released the funds meant for construction of ISLs and it worked wonders.
“If there is pendency of bills, others get demotivated. We cleared bills within 24 hours,” he explained.
Mr. Patil told The Hindu that Warangal rural district stood at seventh position in the top 10 list of districts having more villages declared Open Defecation Free. Of the 269 Gram Panchayats, the district declared 53 Gram Panchayats ODF.
“We are not happy with this achievement. By October 2, we will declare 20 more GPs but by June next year, we will announce the whole district as ODF,” he asserted.