The man who made “sanitation sexy”

Brut India

For nearly 70 years, most of India defecated in the open. But it took this man 5 years and a nod from the Prime Minister to turn that number on its head. Meet the OG "toilet man" of India on World Toilet Day.

Transcript

00:00toilets. Not very sexy are they? But let me tell you about a man who made sanitation sexy.

00:08In the year 2000, 75% of Indians were defecating in the open. But after only two decades,

00:15in 2020, that number was just 15%. So what happened? And who was responsible? Turns out,

00:24this man.

00:30Parmeshwaran Iyer wanted to become a tennis player, but succumbed to his parents' wishes

00:35of him getting a regular job. He applied for a few jobs and even worked at the Oberoi hotels,

00:41but left in just 10 days. He was tired of chopping vegetables. Unclear of his path ahead,

00:47Iyer decided to take a crack at the civil service exams while working as a sub-editor

00:52at the Indian Express. Over the next few decades, he worked as an IAS officer and also with the

00:58World Bank. Iyer was with the World Bank in Vietnam on 15th August 2014 when he heard this speech.

01:08I couldn't believe that the Prime Minister of India was talking about toilets and open

01:14defecation from the Red Fort. Iyer returned to India to spearhead the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

01:20to help the government eradicate open defecation. He had a monumental task ahead of him.

01:50Inadequate sanitation cost India nearly 6.4% of its GDP, a 2006 World Bank report said.

02:05The majority of this money was spent in battling premature mortality and other health issues

02:11caused by unsanitary practices and environment. Iyer said he and his team got on board 120 million

02:18school students, 1 million masons who built the low-cost toilets, 9 lakh village leaders,

02:24700 district collectors, 20 celebrity brand ambassadors and one communicator-in-chief,

02:31the Prime Minister. Next, he focused on what he called the quick wins or the low-hanging fruit.

02:49To tackle stigma, he got inside a toilet pit himself to clean it.

02:58They also launched a radio campaign of Shaucha Singh, the toilet salesman debunking common myths.

03:05He even used social media and Bollywood to drive behaviour change.

03:25So, where in 2015 nearly half of India's population defecated in the open,

03:31in 2019 that number was down by about 450 million people.

03:48The WHO said that the Swachh Bharat mission could have prevented more than 3 lakh deaths

03:53between 2014 and 2019. It was an incredible start for India,

04:02but this certainly was not the end of the road. There are still questions about the

04:06sustainability of these toilets and whether or not people would continue to use them.

04:11And although the government's ambitious five-year goal seemed to have been met,

04:29Ayyar said he would have liked to focus on urban India a little more,

04:32and try a more comprehensive waste management programme for highly populated areas

04:37if he had been given more time.

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