NONGSTOIN: Thousands of people participated in the Total Sanitation Campaign programme organised by the State Water and Sanitation Board in collaboration with the District Water and Sanitation Mission at Mawkyrwat on Wednesday.

Deputy Chief Minister Rowell Lyngdoh was the chief guest on the occasion. The main objective of the Campaign was to eliminate the practice of open defecation and pigsty toilets, ensuring construction of sanitary latrines for households apart from safe disposal of human faeces and maintenance of personal and environmental hygiene.

After patting on the back by announcing that he would give one per cent of the annual budget of the ministry for rural development (`99,000 crores) to the ministry of panchayati raj, Union minister Jairam Ramesh is faced with reality check — that it is not he who can do so, but Parliament only.

A few weeks ago, Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh announced that one per cent of his ministry’s annual budget, which would come to about `990 crores, would be given to the panchayati raj ministry.

The government on Tuesday informed the Lok Sabha about the expansion of the scope of activities permitted under the rural job guarantee scheme by including 30 new activities. These will supplement agricultural and animal husbandry operations along with flood management and sanitation-related works in rural India.

Rural development ministry ropes in Bollywood actor Vidya Balan to promote the use of toilets. Total sanitation, the official term for ending open defecation in the country, is not remotely close to either total or sanitation, show census data.

The figures supplied by state governments on the website of the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) run by the Union Ministry for Rural Development have been exposed as false to a rather overwhelming degree. While the TSC data have 68 per cent sanitation for the country as a whole, the census found just 32.7 per cent of the country was so covered. Open defecation was the practice elsewhere.

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.

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.

After hitting headlines on lack of toilets and roping in filmstars Vidya Balan and Shah rukh Khan for campaign, Union minister of rural development Jairam Ramesh has got an “assurance” from the Planning Commission for a total allocation of a whopping Rs36,000 crores in the 12th five-year plan for Total Sanitation Campaign, which is now being restructured, against mere Rs7,816 crores in the 11th five-year plan.

Shahrukh Khan and Vidya Balan will come together, not to promote a commercial venture, but to act as brand ambassadors to fight open defecation, propagate sanitation and appeal to the people to get clean.

Union Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh, who also holds the portfolio of drinking water and sanitation, has broached the idea with the actors, and their response has been positive.