Govt partner with Gates Foundation for tackling sanitation crisis

The Central government will be partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to create low-cost sanitation facilities across India.

Rural development minister Jairam Ramesh on Wednesday met with Microsoft founder Bill Gates to find a quick fix for the country's sanitation problem.

Ramesh urged Gates to have an India-centric approach as nearly 60% of all open defecations happen here.

Reportedly, Gates Foundation was urged to partner with Indian Institutes in the R&D field to help co-develop low-cost sanitation solutions.

The government is in particular looking for partnership in its "Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan" campaign that aims to end defecation within 10 years in the country.

It is also working on affordable technological solutions for clean toilets in Railways as 11 million passengers commute daily without proper hygienic conditions.

Last year, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had launched the initiative titled 'Reinventing the toilet' at Rwanda, Africa to help bring safe, clean sanitation services to millions of poor people in the developing world.

Gates earlier told reporters that some of the world's leading sanitation experts are expected to present their latest toilet designs in Seattle in August.

This public health innovation, says the co-chair of Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is his "ultimate dream" though it is "not the only one".

"There's expertise all over the world in this. We're putting money and asking people to come up with a cheap design. And, actually this August we have scientists, engineers from all over the world come and tell us on this," Gates was quoted by media as saying.

"It should be possible to have a toilet that does not require running water, whose cost is very low and whose smell characteristics are as good or better than a flush toilet. But, it doesn't exist yet," he said.

Nearly half of India's 1.2 billion people have no toilet at home. Only 46.9% of the 246.6 million households have lavatories. Some 60 per cent of the total population still practise open defecation.

The WHO/UNICEF joint monitoring programme for water supply and sanitation has said that at its present pace, India would take time till 2054 to meet its millennium development goals 2015 on sanitation.