Mumbai:Revealing that still 60 per cent of village households in India do not have access to proper toilet facilities, federal Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh yesterday called for greater gender sensitivity in the implementation of the total sanitation campaign aimed at ending open defecation.
Delivering a keynote address on gender empowerment through physical infrastructure, Ramesh criticised the administrative machinery for implementing it as a half-hearted campaign which constructed low-cost toilet blocks. He said the issue was far more sensitive and directly affected the empowerment of women.
Ramesh, however, complimented the northern states of Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim for their relative success in the implementation of the total sanitation campaign. He said one third of gram panchayats (village councils) in Maharashtra had become free of open defecation.
According to Ramesh, the gender empowerment is a built-in component in most of the flagship programmes of the federal Ministry of Rural Development.
Rural roads
The minister said the rural roads had improved the mobility of women, increased continuation of schooling by adolescent girls, who could now cycle on better paved roads, and made the delivery of health services by Asha (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers more efficient.
Ramesh said India was a country with great diversity, and all nationally conceived programmes, which were subject to guidelines, were inflexible.
Citing the example of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), a plan in India to provide good all-weather road connectivity to unconnected villages with a population of 500 people, Ramesh said the scheme had not been able to address the problem of connectivity in most tribal areas as well as in the desert areas of Rajasthan.
The minister said the progress of PMGSY was not satisfactory as only 60 per cent of the work was complete so far, whereas the programme should have ended in 2007.
Delivering a keynote address on gender empowerment through physical infrastructure, Ramesh criticised the administrative machinery for implementing it as a half-hearted campaign which constructed low-cost toilet blocks. He said the issue was far more sensitive and directly affected the empowerment of women.
Ramesh, however, complimented the northern states of Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim for their relative success in the implementation of the total sanitation campaign. He said one third of gram panchayats (village councils) in Maharashtra had become free of open defecation.
According to Ramesh, the gender empowerment is a built-in component in most of the flagship programmes of the federal Ministry of Rural Development.
Rural roads
The minister said the rural roads had improved the mobility of women, increased continuation of schooling by adolescent girls, who could now cycle on better paved roads, and made the delivery of health services by Asha (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers more efficient.
Ramesh said India was a country with great diversity, and all nationally conceived programmes, which were subject to guidelines, were inflexible.
Citing the example of the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), a plan in India to provide good all-weather road connectivity to unconnected villages with a population of 500 people, Ramesh said the scheme had not been able to address the problem of connectivity in most tribal areas as well as in the desert areas of Rajasthan.
The minister said the progress of PMGSY was not satisfactory as only 60 per cent of the work was complete so far, whereas the programme should have ended in 2007.
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