When Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission in 2014, it was hailed as a national effort to end open defecation and restore dignity through sanitation. By 2019, India was officially declared open defecation free (ODF). But in Bhopal, the reality on the ground tells a different story.
Across the city’s rapidly expanding outskirts, construction labourers are still forced to defecate in the open. These migrant workers are involved in building metro corridors, government offices, residential colonies and shopping complexes. Yet many live and work without access to toilets, clean water or basic bathing facilities.
According to the Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC), it is the responsibility of builders and contractors to ensure sanitation facilities at construction sites, including those on government projects. The civic body maintains that its role is limited to oversight and enforcement.
Despite that, basic facilities remain absent at numerous locations. Labour camps have sprung up around Aashima Mall, Hoshangabad Road, D-Mart, the airport and other construction corridors. These temporary settlements, cobbled together from bamboo and plastic sheets, house families who often live on-site for months at a stretch.
“We do provide mobile toilets for the short term on request,” a senior BMC source told The Pioneer. “But it is not the civic body’s job to install toilets at construction camps.”
However, BMC’s role does not end there. Supervision of such sites and the authority to initiate penal action fall under the purview of ward and zone officials, as part of the city’s ongoing ODF enforcement.
When asked how many such penalties had been imposed in recent months, BMC officials tasked with implementing the Swachh Bharat Mission refrained from comment or redirected the queries.
Meanwhile, workers continue to cope without essential services. “There are no washrooms here,” said Meena Devi, a daily wage worker living with her two children at a construction site near Hoshangabad Road. “Every morning we go to the fields. There is no other option.”
In some older parts of the city, a few labourers use Sulabh pay-and-use toilets. But most settlements along the city’s edges have no such facilities nearby. Many of the affected workers are unaware that it is the contractor’s legal obligation to provide sanitation.
With the arrival of the monsoon, the vulnerability of these impoverished communities deepens. Doctors warn that exposure to stagnant water mixed with human faeces could trigger outbreaks of diarrhoea, typhoid and E. coli infections.
The risk of injuries, such as slipping on wet debris or encountering snakes, also rises sharply during the rainy season.
Most workers interviewed said they had never been informed of their entitlements. “No one told us this is their duty,” said one labourer. “We manage as best we can.”
As Bhopal marches ahead with its growth plans, the burden falls heavily on those building the city from the ground up. Yet for this workforce, sanitation — a fundamental marker of dignity — remains out of reach.