Four years after the supreme Court passed orders directing India’s 29 state governments and seven Union Territories to ensure that all 1.20 million government schools countrywide are equipped with toilets, and two years after prime minister Narendra Modi launched the BJP/NDA government’s Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya (national clean school) campaign on October 2, 2014 with the mission to construct separate toilets for girls and boys, a huge number of Tamil Nadu’s 37,002 government and aided schools are without adequate toilets and sanitation. 

The state government’s failure to comply with Supreme Court and the Centre’s directives has been brought to light by Madurai-based health and education activist C. Anand Raj who filed a public interest writ praying for a court directive to the state government to address this issue. The PIL (public interest litigation) writ was heard by Justices S. Nagamuthu and M.V. Muralidharan of the Madras high court’s Madurai bench on November 2, 18 and 25 last year. The bench admonished Tamil Nadu’s director of school education Dr. V.C. Rameswaramurugan for making false claims in a letter to the court dated February 21, 2016, that adequate toilet facilities had been provided in government schools and new toilets were under construction. The letter prompted the high court to appoint three advocate commissions to inspect toilet facilities in randomly selected government and aided schools in Madurai, Dindigul and Thanjavur districts of Tamil Nadu. 

Based on the report of the advocate commissions, the court then directed D. Sabitha, school education secretary of the state government, to submit a status report. According to the report, 141,288 toilets are required for 2.85 million children in government schools statewide. Against this, only 66,610 have been built so far, a deficit of 74,678, which requires two years to bridge, according to Sabitha’s report. When the case came up for final hearing on November 25, the judges warned the state education ministry that it will initiate contempt proceedings against its officials for misleading the court, and directed the government to provide adequate toilet facilities in all government girls’ schools in the next academic year (2017-18), and all boys’ schools before commencement of the academic year 2018-19. It also directed the state government to appoint conservancy staff and night watchmen in all schools. 

The open, continuous and unchecked neglect of basic infrastructure in Tamil Nadu’s 37,002 government schools — and of the nitty-gritties of administration — is confirmed by a report of the state’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) which highlights the maladministration of a menstrual hygiene project initiated in 2011. According to the CAG report (which prompted the Women Advocates Association to file a public interest petition in the high court) in August 2016, the state government had sanctioned Rs.8.45 crore (out of a total Rs.44.21 crore allocated for the menstrual hygiene project) for installation of sanitary napkin vending machines, and construction of masonry incinerators for safe disposal of napkins in 3,200 schools of Tamil Nadu. Against this, the Tamil Nadu Corporation for Development of Women, which received the funds in 2013 for providing the incinerators, expended only Rs.1.09 crore in two years ending September 2015. 

Informed NGO activists crusading for improved sanitation in government schools believe the root of the problem is the multiple number of government departments and agencies involved in disbursal of funds and construction of toilets. “There is complete lack of coordination between government departments in charge of construction, water supply, electricity and maintenance with the result that even constructed toilets are unusable. The solution is to decentralise school administration and devolve responsibility for building and maintaining toilets to the headmaster/headmistress of each government school or to local panchayats. Toilets should be customised for ground conditions bearing in mind that eco-friendly toilets are best suited for schools in districts suffering water scarcity. Moreover, teachers and students should work with conservancy staff to maintain hygiene and sanitation,” says Ananth Narayanan, founder of Change India, a centre for research and advocacy in Chennai. 

Quite clearly, the failure of the Swachh Vidyalaya programme in Tamil Nadu is less rooted in inadequate financial provision than administrative inefficiency. A sad outcome in a state which less than two decades ago boasted the most efficient bureaucracy in India. 

Hemalatha Raghupathi (Chennai)