Valsad, Gujarat: “We want to leave Gujarat and join Dadra and Nagar Haveli,” says Meghwad village chief Lahanubhai Diwadbhai Mhadha. For years now, Meghwad, also known as Maghval, has been facing innumerable issues of access to other towns, hospital, electricity and toilets, according to Mhadha.

In south Gujarat, Meghwad in Kaprada block of Valsad district is a case in point that risks thwarting the Gujarat model and particularly its claims of being open defecation free (ODF). Meghwad, though under the administrative purview of Gujarat, lies in the union territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli (DNH), outside the state boundary and a few kilometers from DNH capital Silvassa.

The village chief rattles off the letters of complaint he has written over the years to state authorities in Kaprada, the administrative block, to those in the state capital of Gandhinagar, but to no avail. Hence he expressed a desire to join DNH.

The quaint village with 2,160 villagers is a rich landscape with the Daman Ganga River cutting through it, leaving a hilly stretch on one side and plain lands on the other. But toilets? Not every household has one.

When Silvassa resident Mamta Patel got married to Arvind Patel of Meghwad in 2011 and arrived at the village, she was shocked. There was no toilet in her marital home. “After years of living in my maternal home that has a toilet, it was very difficult for me,” Mamta told VillageSquare.in. Now her five-year-old daughter Trisha faces the same problem. “My parents-in-law do not mind defecating in the open, but I find it very difficult having to go so far each time.”

Swachh Bharat Mission

According to Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), a whopping 61 million toilets have been built since 2 October, 2014 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched SBM to achieve Mahatma Gandhi’s vision of a clean India. SBM aims to make India clean by 2019 and pay the perfect tribute to Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. Going by statistics, with the nation registering a surge in total household toilet coverage from 38.70% in October 2014 to 75.63% by January 2018, India seems set to meet the target.

In all, as official figures state, 3,05,593 villages and 10 states across India have been declared ODF. Adducing complete credibility to statistics could thwart reality. The construction of toilets to facilitate defecation may serve the purpose in urban India where civic laws can penalise; the same even monitored by a robust opposition and a vigil media.

Urban rural divide

In cities, in the absence of toilets, people relieve themselves in the open. This is despite the law against open defecation being in place for years. There was literally no alternative.

Now, with the focus on construction of more toilets and stringent measures against open defecation, the problem appears to have been mitigated. Developmental works, surge in commercialisation in urban India and effective implementation of open defecation laws have helped abate the problem.