Unique methods adapted to make Swachh Bharat work

As compiled by India Today, here are some outlandish methods adapted by citizens or communities across the country to stop open defecation and make Swachh Bharat work. If you have examples from your area, city or state, please do share the same.

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Swachh Bharat Mission

Unique methods adapted by citizens to make Swachh Bharat work

1. 'Tank' you very much for not peeing
Indian walls are a sad lot. When they're not being vandalised with obnoxious love messages, they face a smelly assault of nature's call. In fact, many desperate home-owners are forced to spray paint offensive warnings that call the person relieving himself an ass. Instances of these are so widespread that the warnings have even made their way to Bollywood.

2. Name and shame: Videos, photos, children clapping, whistling at pee-public of India
In February this year, the Uttar Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation announced plans to install CCTV cameras at various bus stops to record offenders and put their videos up on YouTube. In Kanpur, even school kids were in on the fun as they took to shaming open urination with ringing bells and metal plates.

Government advertisements propagating "Swachh Bharat" were also themed around public shaming offenders - collective clapping when for anyone littering or peeing in public.

The use of such tactics precedes PM Modi's election, though. In 2012, volunteers in Rajasthan beat drums and whistled to shame those peeing in public. Later, in 2013, Bangalore police garlanded people caught urinating in public. Their methods were replicated by the Hyderabad police earlier this year.

In 2015, villages in West Bengal's Nadia district set up "walls of shame" where they put up names and photos of people caught peeing in public.
More recently, according to a Patrika report, village heads in Chhattisgarh set up teams to whistle and shine torches at people peeing in public. A panchayat in Karnataka's Koppal also resorted to blowing whistles at offenders, but his plan did not go down well with his constituents.

3. Humble requests and pleas: We beg you to reconsider
In another village of Koppal, the head devised a nobler method to encourage cleanliness.
Srinivas Karturi went around throwing himself at people's feet, requesting them to not defecate in the open and build toilets. He aims to make the village open-defecation free by 2016-17.

"I fall at your feet and request you to build a toilet please," he tells villagers. Unlike his whistle-blowing comrade, Karturi's methods are leaving a mark on villagers. Some express embarrassment and many feel they should adhere to his plea.

4. Do it yourself: When villagers take charge
A Madurai village decided to ditch activism and simply take matters in its own hands. With financial help from the owner of Devaki Hospitals in Madurai and some sponsors who grew up in the village, the community built toilets for most homes and a public toilet facility for others.
Interestingly, the entire effort was inspired by a 90-year-old-couple in the village who had spent their lives living in a kuccha house, but recently built a concrete toilet for themselves.

Now, the villagers are so protective of their toilets, they've formed teams to ensure neighbouring villagers don't use them during peak potty-hours. Village administration is also aiming to set up a waste management scheme to manage biodegradable and non-biodegradable waste.
In another area of Madurai, a hygiene and health conscious group formed a walking club to spend their Sundays keeping streets clean.

5. Leading by example
In Guwahati, 25 schoolgirls 'adopted' the road in front of their school to ensure its cleanliness. They even worked hard to generate awareness about water contamination and recycling plastic in their neighbourhood.
In Bihar, young engineer Anoop Jain left his job to build public toilets in villages. Jain founded an organization called Sanitation and Health Rights and has seen thousands of villagers happily use and maintain toilets built by them. The organisation maintains a Google Spreadsheet that tracks the number of users each day.

6.Eww! That's disgusting: Shock treatment
What's better than taking charge? An education.
In Lucknow's Mirzapur, a district chief development officer roped in the local Swachh Bharat Mission team to educate his block about the threats of open defecation. Their subsequent demonstration left the villagers in shock.
To explain how flies spread diseases, "the NGO worker gathered villagers near the defecation ground. He had a bottle of water, which he poured in a glass. He plucked a strand of hair from his head and touched it to an excreta heap. He dipped the hair in the glass of water and asked villagers to drink. Everyone cringed," the officer told Times of India.
Their presentation persuaded people to build toilets or use existing ones.

7. Bride and prejudice
Some of the most inspiring stories of toilet-building campaigns come from brides-to-be. Women in rural areas of Kanpur, Odisha, Bihar, Haryana and several other states have refused to marry into families lacking toilets.
In April a woman from Kanpur went viral when she called off her wedding because the groom's household was toilet-less.

The government's "No Toilet, No Bride" campaign is also encouraging more and more young women to follow a similar path.

8. Social boycott: When even barbers won't give you a shave
After attending a Swachh Bharat session, villagers in Bhopal's Bhuteda decided to get stern with households that lacked toilets. Deliveries of essentials like vegetables were stopped for such homes, and villagers are now planning their social-boycott.
According to a Hindustan Times report, even barbers in the village are participating in the pro-toilet campaign by refusing to give shaves and haircuts to villagers without toilets at home.

9. The hunger games
In a Karnataka village, meanwhile, 15-year-old girl Lavanya staged a 48-hour hunger protest demanding a toilet in her home.

Lavanya's initial pleas were shot down by her father since they lacked funds. But Lavanya's protest pushed the village panchayat to chip in and help construct a toilet outside her home.

10. Invoking God and Gandhi
Some Swachh Bharat crusaders, meanwhile, are hoping to inspire people to change. A drama student in Odisha is visiting villages dressed as Mahatma Gandhi to promote Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan.

Sairam started walking from Jagannath Puri Temple on June 24 and has since visited many villages around the area.
Many walls in various states - from Delhi to Mumbai - have also been covered with images of gods and religious symbols to dissuade people from spraying on them.

While one might expect these tactics to work, that's not always been the case.

11. Show them the money
When nothing else works, we know throwing money at a problem will. Thankfully, in this case it doesn't amount to corruption.
In 2015, the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation announced that people will be given a rupee for using public toilets. For better results, the scheme was aggressively implemented near slum areas.

Many state governments and village heads have also announced monetary rewards to convince households to use toilets.

These are just some of the outlandish or enthusiastic methods adopted by some citizens in their bid to help clean the country. These may or may not be successful but at the end of the day, the muck stops here. more