Chief Minister increases component to Rs.2,500

Perturbed by the fact that 73.3 per cent of rural households in the State are still resorting to open defecation, Chief Minister Jayalalithaa has hiked the State's contribution to families willing to construct a toilet by Rs.1,500.

GUWAHATI: For implementation of the Total Sanitation Campaign in Assam, National Coordinator of New Delhi’s Sulabh International Social Service, Rupal Roy, met Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi yesterday.

Roy briefed the Chief Minister as to how this sanitation programme should be carried on in the State. The Total Sanitation Campaign is a comprehensive programme to ensure sanitation facilities in rural areas with broader goal to eradicate the practice of open defecation.

In a bid to check the theft of canal water, the Punjab Cabinet today approved amendments to Section 70 of the Northern India Canal and Drainage Act, 1873, to make it far more stringent and punitive. A decision to this effect was taken at a meeting of the Council of Ministers under the chairmanship of Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. A spokesperson said that under the amended Act, the amount of fine for canal water theft had been enhanced from the earlier Rs 1,000 to a minimum Rs 5,000 and maximum Rs 50,000 or imprisonment up to six months or both.

An important scheme to improve the health and lifestyle of residents in rural pockets around Tambaram and also to improve access to proper sanitation is in disarray owing to neglect on the part of State government agencies.

The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) of the Ministry of Rural Development aims at elimination of open defecation in rural areas and ensuring that all households, schools and Children's Centres of Integrated Child Development Services or government-run creches have toilets. The scheme also mandates the construction of at least one integrated sanitary complex in every rural local body.

Having kicked up a controversy by saying women in villages demand mobile phones and not toilets, Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh on Monday announced that his ministry has decided to use the network of 8.6 lakh women health workers employed by the Health Ministry to improve sanitation facilities.

BHOPAL/ BETUL: A tribal woman from Madhya Pradesh's Betul district, who ran away from her husband's house barely two days after her marriage over lack of sanitary facilities, has become a brand ambassador for a cleanliness drive. Anita Narre's insistence on having a toilet at her in-law's place not only compelled her husband to take up the issue with the panchayat at his native in Jheetudhana in Betul district but also made Sulabh International adopt Anita's village for its "Total Cleanliness Drive".

An Indian woman has been rewarded for her ‘bold’ decision to leave her marital home within days of the wedding to protest the lack of a toilet in the household, an official said on Thursday.

Anita Narre was handed $10,000 by Sulabh International, a non-profit group, for refusing to defecate in the open and sparking a ‘toilet revolution’ in her village in central Madhya Pradesh, according to the district magistrate.