Despite of government's efforts to create awareness on the issue of open defecation, the problem still haunts the country. However, the surge against open defecation was never as strong as it has become now.
To tackle the problem of open defecation, the Municipal Corporation of Panchkula has come up with a seemingly promising strategy. The municipal corporation has decided to 'name and shame' the people who defecate and urinate in the open.
To achieve the aim of publicly shaming the defaulters in order to deter them from defecating in the open spaces, the municipal corporation has developed three different strategies and one of them is to hire members of the transgender community who will go to the defaulters’ house and sing songs.
“As far as taking help from transgender is concerned, we are in the process of that. Transgenders will go to the defaulter’s house and sing sarcastic songs like, ‘Wow! You have done a very good deed by defecating in open’. With all the strategies, our aim is just to make people aware and make them use toilets. We do not intend to belittle anyone”, says Commissioner Rajesh Jogpal.
This is not the first time the method has been implemented under the Swachh Bharat campaign. It has been implemented in Madhya Pradesh.
The other two strategies under the name and shame policy include displaying names of the defaulters on the districts’s and municipal corporation’s website and Facebook page and using the defaulters’ posters with their names.
The district was declared open defecation free in October 2017 but, clearly, the problem still persists. Mayor Upinder Kaur Ahluwalia told The Indian Express, “Even after getting the status, people were still doing OD. When we got the status, the city was actually open defecation free.”
When the entire country is going on a drive against open defecation, the corporation has challaned 131 defaulters in the last two months, The Indian Express reported.