UP’s VIP districts fare poorly in checking open defecation
The so-called VIP districts in Uttar Pradesh fare poorly when it comes to checking open defecation.
This is the ground reality though Chief minister Yogi Adityanath has already declared that all 75 districts of the state will be open defecation free (ODF) by October 2018, a year ahead of the national deadline.
Despite being represented by political leaders, almost all such districts in UP have got one of the poorest all-India rankings based on individual household latrine (IHHL) coverage.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s parliamentary constituency Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Lucknow, Rae Bareli, Amethi, Etawah and Mainpuri are among such districts.
Barring one or two, the VIP districts have less than 50% coverage in villages. As a result, a majority of the rural population in these districts has no choice but to still defecate in the open.
A look at the current districtwise all-India ranking done by the Union ministry of drinking water and sanitation shows that the Gorakhpur district, represented by five-time BJP MP and chief minister Yogi Adityanath, holds 619th rank among the 687 districts in the country. The individual latrine coverage in the district is as low as 30.55%.
Rae Bareli and Amethi, the Lok Sabha constituencies of Congress president Sonia Gandhi and vice-president Rahul Gandhi, are ranked 543rd and 526th with latrine coverage of 41.78% and 44.43%.
Azamgarh, represented by Samajwadi Party (SP) patriarch Mulayam Singh Yadav, is ranked 606 with 32.42% individual household latrine (IHHL) coverage.
Mulayam and his son and former chief minister Akhilesh Yadav’s home district Etawah has only a slightly better ranking at 457 with latrine coverage of 56.44%.
Mainpuri, another SP bastion, is ranked 522 with 44.85% latrine coverage.
Varanasi is placed three notches below Etawah with a rank of 460. Here, the IHHL coverage is 55.92%.
Lucknow district has an allIndia rank of 542 based on 42% rural latrine coverage.
Among the regions, the Braj region in western UP is especially found to have a low IHHL coverage.
The districts of Mathura, Agra, Aligarh, Hathras, Etah, Kasganj in the Braj region have got a very low rank. Etah with merely 17.95% IHHL coverage has got the lowest all-India rank of 671 within the state,. It is followed by Sultanpur (667). Agra and Barabanki and Faizabad come after Sultanpur.
“Achieving the target (of making UP open defecation free by October 2018) is not impossible if the agencies concerned work in a mission mode, but the challenge will certainly come from the so-called VIP districts where the individual household latrine coverage is much below the state average of around 50%,” said an official requesting anonymity.