IAS officer leads by example, cleans toilet pit in Telangana
HYDERABAD : Senior IAS officer Parameswaran Iyer knows how to lead from the front.
When the secretary to the Union ministry of drinking water and sanitation got inside a twin toilet pit in a Telangana village and removed faecal matter with his hands, t40-odd bureaucrats and villagers watched him in awe.
The action of Iyer, who heads the Swachh Bharat Mission, also caught the attention of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Modi lauded him while addressing the nation during his “Mann ki Baat” programme on Sunday.
“This toilet pit emptying exercise undertaken by the Drinking Water & Sanitation Ministry is remarkable!” Modi tweeted as well.
Iyer was on a visit to Gangadevipalli in Warangal district on February 18 along with a delegation of 40 bureaucrats, including 23 principal secretaries associated with the rural development departments in various states, besides UNICEF representatives
The team was there to study the concept of twin-pit toilet technology that converts human excreta into manure within a short period of time and also helps in eliminating the practice of open defecation.
The officers, on a training programme at the National Institute of Rural Development (NIRD) in Hyderabad, saw the toilets in seven houses and interacted with the residents to understand how the technology works.
Each toilet consists of two holes that are dug up and cemented and as one gradually fills up with faecal matter, the villagers start using the second pit. The first pit is closed and the faecal matter in it gets decomposed, dries up and turns into manure. After six months, the first pit is emptied and can be used again by the time the second pit is full.
“While explaining this technology, Iyer suddenly wanted to know how the first pit is emptied. He removed the lid of the pit, got into it and started lifting the dried up faecal matter, which had turned into a manure, using a shovel,” Warangal (rural) joint collector Prashant Jeevan Patil told Hindustan Times.
Patil said Iyer did not even wear gloves on his hands.
“It was a surprise to everybody and after some time, all of us started participating in the cleaning up of the toilet. He led a by example in showing that scavenging is not a menial job,” Patil said.
The joint collector said villagers of Gangadevipalli have been using this twin-pit technology for the last 16 years.
“They do the manual cleaning of pits but watching an IAS officer do it was unusual for them. They all appreciated it,” he said.