I saw an amazing program on TV the other night about an Indian man, Dr Bindeshwar Palhak who established the Sulabh Sanitation Movement.

Hard to imagine that in a country like India, with it’s huge population, the majority of disease is caused by lack of adequate sanitation. In fact, many houses in New Delhi and other major city centres, do not have toilets. What do they do? I hear you ask? Well, they squat on the street, under bridges and beside rivers…………..hard to believe in the 21st century! 110 million Indian houses have no toilets and 10 million have “bucket toilets” that are emptied onto the streets!
What is worse, “scavanger” women sanitation collectors (who belong to the lowest caste of “untouchables” in the Indian social system), have the role of collecting this human excrement from the streets, and are subsequently shunned by the society because of this work.
Dr Palhak ( a Brahman by caste and therefore high on the social ladder) developed an ecologically sound recycling system in the early 1970’s and set about establishing waste management and sanitation strategies to improve the quality of life of India’s poorest people. To date Dr. Palhak and his foundation have built millions of toilets in India. But his workdoes not stop there, he promotes health programs, education and training and support for the poor of India and has been recognised world wide for the amazing technological breakthroughs in sustainable sanitation developed by his foundation.

This man has invested in the future of his country and his fellow Indian’s, no matter their social or financial status. In fact he is a true humanitarian…………….and it all started by identifying a need and doing something practical about it, even though sanitation is not a “sexy” cause, he has invested heavily in making life better for poor people. We could all learn a think or too from Dr Palhak………a man with true vision!

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 6th, 2006 at 5:48 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.