Modi government’s flagship initiative on cleanliness, ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ has invited innovative ideas for better implementation. In an attempt to crowd source solutions for some of the pressing problems faced by the country in Sanitation and Hygiene, government invited students from schools and colleges, professionals, organizations, and others to come up with exciting, innovative, and viable solutions in the categories like monitoring usage of toilets, solutions for maintenance and operations of toilets etc.
Officials said that Mygov is organizing Swachhata Hackathon in which ideas have been sought from common people.
The participants will be required to submit their entries in the respective categories in MyGov portal and the submissions will be reviewed by a panel of domain experts and winners will be awarded.
The basic purpose of the competition is creating awareness among the common people through their participation.
There are six categories including monitoring use of toilets, triggering behaviour change, toilet technologies in difficult terrains, working solutions for maintenance and operation of school toilets, technological solutions for safe disposal of menstrual waste and solution for early decomposition of faecal matter under which people will have to give their views.
Usage of toilets is the key goal of the Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin. Toilet usage is presently measured on a sample basis through household surveys.
There is, however, no technological solution available to directly measure usage of toilets. The ability to easily measure usage of toilets would allow the Swachh Bharat Mission to take immediate and responsive steps to promote usage.
“Technological solutions that can be adapted in rural areas to effectively measure usage of toilets have been invited. The solutions should be affordable, socially acceptable and easy to use,” added the official.
Similarly, behaviour change is fundamental to the Swachh Bharat Mission.
“It has been seen that old habits die hard and behaviour change takes time. Some people continue to defecate in the open even after having a household toilet. Innovative solutions have been sought to trigger and motivate people to stop open defecation and use toilets,” added the official.
Similarly, any solutions for the upgradation of the current toilet technology have also been invited as it has been seen that current technology is not working properly in flood prone areas.
It has also been seen that due to the lack of human and monetary resources across many schools, continuous maintenance of toilets is challenging. There are also other problems in certain areas like lack of adequate water in school toilets.