Shruti had fallen ill, so she had to stay back at Dishari (our accommodation). I and shailee left to meet our escort at Nishtha. Fortunately we found him on the way itself. We were also accompanied by Mr.Moloy Mukherjee. He documents various projects for Nishtha and develops posters and pamphlets for them. Our first visit was to two schools in Baruipur, where Nishtha had taken up its Sanitation project. As part of the project they were building toilets in schools. They had also started a new project under the umbrella of its sanitation projects. This new project, still in pilot stages aims at providing girl students with menstruation kits with necessary items at a very low price. Due to the conservative nature of the society in Baruipur, Nishtha had to work very hard to make these people understand the use of menstrual kits and a safe way to dump them. Finally Nishitha was successful in convincing Six schools in the area, two Muslim schools and four Hindu schools, to run the pilot edition of the project.

The project involves two parts. The first part being, providing menstrual kits to the girls, talking to them about personal hygiene and encouraging them to use these kits. The second part of the project is building toilets with incinerators.

Incinerator

Urinals in a School

We went to a village called “Hanta”, which is a little far from Baruipur. We had to walk to reach this village, no road for auto or even bullock carts, thus the name “Hanta” which means “by walk”. We saw two projects of Nishtha here.

The first one was one of Nishtha’s sanitation projects. Nishtha provides loans to villagers for building toilets in their houses. Only a part of the costs is covered by Nishtha and the loan can be repayed in an year. Though the security for the loan and other such necessary conditions are eased, the people still are not willing to build toilets in their homes. Though the main reason for such denial is their conservative nature , one definite reason remains that proper drainage system is not available. We got to meet two families deeply affected because of absence of toilets.

The first family:
The girl in the family here was attacked by a leech, which got stuck to her when she went to the fields for relieving herself. There was continous bleeding and the local doctors could not determine the cause. She had to be taken to a city and finally the doctor there found out the actual cause and could remove the leech successfully.

First Family

The second family:
This was a joint family of five brothers. The elder brother had a single child. This boy was bit by a snake when he went into the fields to relieve himself. He died because of the absence of proper medical care. After knowing about her son’s loss, his mother got a heart attack and died. The father could not take all this and went into a mental shock. He hasn’t yet recovered yet.

Second Family

Nishtha has documented these two case studies and is using them extensively to propagate the need of toilets.

The other project is Nishtha’s Drinking water project. Nishtha has formed water committees in the villages around Baruipur. These water committees take the responsibility of installingdrinking water taps in their villages. For every 12 houses one tap is built. The water committee takes care of the costs and any other decisions regarding the taps in their village. These water committees are mainly headed by women, thus fusing well with the “Women Empowerment” aim of Nishtha.