Faced with the mammoth task of making the country open-defecation free (ODF) within the next five years, the Union Rural Development Ministry has sought convergence of Rs 2,000 crore from the Backward Region Grants Fund (BRGF) for construction of community loos and supply of clean water to the locals in the backward regions across the States.
The RD Ministry’s proposal to converge funds under the BRGF, implemented by the Panchayati Raj Ministry aims to utilise its resources to expedite the aim of making the country ODF by 2019 as envisaged by the Modi Government in its maiden budget 2014-15.
Sources said that RD Secretary Pankaj Jain has written a letter to his counterpart in Panchayati Raj Ministry, Vijay laxshmi Joshi to give nod to converge Rs 2,000 crore of capital investment from BRGF in the backward region for construction of assets relating to water and sanitation such as community toilets and potable water pipelines and tubewells to ensure hygienic facilities to the locals.
Jain said that while under the MNREGA funding is being provided for setting up individual toilets, the BRGF can be utilized to fund community toilets. Similarly, he pointed out single village schemes such as tubewells and overhead tanks and multi-village schemes such as tapping surface water can be taken up to ensure clean water to the locals, absence of which is a cause of many diseases.
Given that globally, India continues to be the country with the highest number of people (597 million people) practising open defecation, the sources say, it will be next to impossible without the help of other Ministries to prevent the people from defecating in the open in view of shortage of toilets as well as poor awareness towards sanitation.
launched in 2006, the centrally sponsored BRGF covers around 272 backward districts which means 40 per cent of the total districts in the country. In the budget 2014-15, it has been allocated Rs 5,310 crore against Rs 2,800 crore last year. It is designed to redress the regional imbalances in development so as to bridge the critical gaps in local infrastructure and other development requirements that are not being met adequately by the existing inflows, said a senior official.