World Toilet Day is a United Nations Observance that celebrates toilets and raises awareness of the 4.2 billion people living without access to safely managed sanitation. It is about taking action to tackle the global sanitation crisis and achieve Sustainable Development Goal 6: water and sanitation for all by 2030.

Mandate is for sustained sanitation and climate change

   ▪ Climate change is getting worse.

   ▪ Flood, drought and rising sea levels are threatening sanitation systems – from toilets to septic tanks to treatment plants.

   ▪ Everyone must have sustainable sanitation that can withstand climate change and keep communities healthy and functioning.

   ▪ Sustainable sanitation systems also reuse waste to safely boost agriculture and reduce and capture emissions for greener energy.

Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS), Ministry of Jal Shakti is celebrating 'World Toilet Day' on November 19, 2020 under 'Swachh Bharat Mission - Grameen (SBMG)' for promoting awareness on access to Safe Sanitation and felicitating districts/states for making significant contribution towards Swachhata.

Phase 2 of SBMG has been launched early this year for sustaining the gains made under Phase 1 (2014-19) with focus on ODF Sustainability and Solid and Liquid Waste Management (SLWM). Various campaigns focusing on construction and beautification of Community Sanitary Complexes (CSCs) have been undertaken countrywide over past one year like Swachh Sunder Samudayik Sauchalay (SSSS) and Samudayik Sauchalay Abhiyan (SSA).

Background

World Toilet Day exists to inform, engage and inspire people to take action toward achieving this goal. The UN General Assembly declared World Toilet Day an official UN day in 2013, after Singapore had tabled the resolution (its first resolution before the UN's General Assembly of 193 member states). Prior to that, World Toilet Day had been established unofficially by the World Toilet Organization (a Singapore-based NGO) in 2001.

Toilets are important because access to a safe functioning toilet has a positive impact on public health, human dignity, and personal safety, especially for women. Sanitation systems that do not safely treat excreta allow the spread of disease. Serious soil-transmitted diseases and waterborne diseases such as cholera, diarrhea, typhoid, dysentery and schistosomiasis can result.

(The author is a trainer for Civil Services aspirants. The views expressed here are personal.)