Gamit Ramilaben Raysingbhai, the tribal social worker from Gujarat’s Tapi district, has been recently recognised by the Modi led Indian government for grassroots level work for improvement in sanitation facilities and awarded with Padmashree, which is the fourth highest civilian award in India. She is credited with transforming nine villages into open-defecation-free ones. Today these villages, which had only 2 toilets in 2014 have over 700 home toilets. She is in the process of creating another 19 public toilets and 57 home toilets.
Open defecation, which means going to the toilet in open in lieu of any personal or public toilet facilities and other behavioural issues, has been a major problem for developing and underdeveloped countries.
Open defecation has significant adverse public health outcomes. It releases faecal germs into the environment where they can contaminate children’s water and food, reach their hands and feet, and be spread by flies. The contaminated food or water can then cause diseases like diarrhoea – which is the leading cause of malnutrition and the second major cause of death among children. Incidents of diarrhoea and other diseases linked to open defecation can also have long-term impacts such as malnutrition and stunting – where the height of a child is significantly lower than the standards for her age. The diseases also reduce the capacity of the intestines to absorb nutrients from food.
In 2014, Ramilaben Gamit, a woman who lived in Gujarat’s small hamlet Taparwada with a population of 3000 people, caught up with the idea of creating toilets for people and thereby benefiting her village and citizens. His village had only two residences with toilets at that time. Ramilaben lives in an area populated by people from aboriginal ethnic tribe ‘Adivasi’, who are among the least educationally developed in the country. Taking the mission to create toilets in her hand, Ramilaben set out on a long and difficult journey.
According to Ramilaben, now aged 57, “The first major issue was convincing people to change their centuries old habit. People were not convinced of the fact that they would have to go to the toilet within their homes. Thanks to Indian PM Modi’s policies a government grant was available to create toilets. The Indian government helps with INR 15,000 (GBP150) to create a home toilet and INR 350,000 (£3500) to create a public toilet. However, since people are uneducated, they do not know how to claim the grants. I had to not only convince them to create a toilet, but also process the grant for them by collecting documents, filing applications etc. Infact, creating a toilet was more expensive than the grant provided. So I teamed up with some like-minded people. All of us started working as masons, labourers and created the toilet for the beneficiary, so that the cost of labour is saved.”
According to Gamit, life has definitely changed after the announcement of the award. People look at her with more respect and she is able to convince them easily. Her immediate family members and in-laws have been very happy with the award.
Ramilaben has not earned anything so far from the activity of creating toilets, in fact, she herself lives a very modest life in a small residence where she and her family of four live on a reasonable salary of her husband, who works as a Government postman. If she would have done an earning activity all this time, she would have been able to build a good house for her family, but she consciously chooses to serve people instead of working to earn. At 57 years of age, Ramilaben is also a sportswoman and takes part in ‘Tug of War’ tournaments organized by the state government.
