About Parishudha

 

Parishish is in initiative funded by Infosys Foundation towards increasing sanitation levels in North Karnataka. The program began in 2011 October and is expected to run through 2012.

 

This initiative intends to 

 

(1) Educate at least 1,00,000 families in having a sustainable toilet of their own 

 

(2) Help 10,000 families in North Karnataka have a toilet of their own in select 40 villages

 

(3) Encourage entrepreneurs to get started in the area of building sanitation facilities for the public and sustain in the long run. Build reusable artifacts including designs, processes to make the initiative easily repeatable elsewhere.

 

Why this project?

 

Lack of sanitation is found to affect

 

• Education
• Health
• Womens respect
• Industrial growth

 

etc.

 

A simple story can tell what could happen when there are no toilets -

It's night 1 O'clock. It's heavily raining outside. You have an upset stomach and you need to go urgently to toilet. 

Alas!! There are no toilets anywhere near by. Outside it's pitch dark. Water is gushing on the streets. Lights are very bleak. Usually you go half a km away. But you may encounter scorpions or snakes in this night. What will you do now?

This is not a fiction. This is the reality faced by millions of Indians every year.

Over 70% to 90% of the villagers in India do not have clean sanitation facilities even as of 2010. In the above kind of scenario, people just go wherever they find a space. Roadside, corner, fields, some other family's toilet or just wherever they find a space.

This causes dirt. Entire area smells bad when it stops raining. Often the filth gets into the wells or sources of drinking water. Waterborne deceases spread. Even best of the best tourist spots get overshadowed because of such filth near by. The well to do ones or the ones who have opportunities keep moving out of the village. No new people move in. It becomes a downward spiral.

It is a black spot on the village and the growing nation. An area can not be called developed or decent enough to live unless it has proper sanitation.

Lack of sanitation is the root cause of many more issues and this project aims at addressing the root cause. 

Primary issues caused by lack of sanitation

Dirty

When there are no designated toilets in the homes, every open space in the village becomes toilet. Entire village smells bad and filthy. 

 

Deceases 

They cause deceases all over the year and highest in rains . Water sources are polluted because of stagnated filth causing diarrhea, cholera etc.

 

Death

50 to 100 women die of snake bytes while going for toilets in an open area in Karnataka alone.

 

Tourism 

Bad odor and unhygienic environment kill the tourism potential of the bright spots. This is the single most reason causing hindrance to growth of tourism in India.

 

Exodus 

Unclean environment is one of the primary reasons  for people to keep moving to cities. No children from cities want to put up with the unclean environment of villages. 

 

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