Click Away For a Cleaner India :The Domex Campaign

4 months back, our office team had set off on a trip to McLeodganj. We'd landed early morning & had discovered much to our horror that no rooms were available at any hotel. After spending more than 12 hours in a bus, all I could think of was a clean washroom to feel human again. A friend & I embarked on a journey to find that paradise. But even after 2 hours we found nothing. By this time we had shred every ounce of shame & were contemplating just barging into some house & using a toilet, hygiene and courtesy be damned!
Finally we headed back to the bus stop & located a public restroom. Oh the relief!

The toilets in our offices, with the fancy bidets, soap dispensers & hand dryers, the ones in our homes that are cleaned everyday & smell so good with all the fragrant air sprays, have you ever spared a single thought to life without it? Yes, where will you click your selfies, right, but more importantly, where would you pee? Being blunt but there's no other way to go about it.

597 million people in rural India have no access to toilets. 597,000,000 is a big number.

Every day, women in villages head off to fields & other lonely locations at the break of dawn. It's common knowledge that Indian male population don't mind peeing in public, but for a woman? Hygiene issues apart, it's a serious compromise of any person's dignity, male or female.

When you are warm & cozy in your bed on chilly winter mornings, these women and kids head out in the open to answer nature's call. And in the rainy season, one can only imagine how tough this gets. Infections from bites, sometimes leading to septicaemia that can lead to shock if untreated; diarrhea, worms etc are only just a few of the concerns such lack of hygiene causes.

Ads on TV about soaps & anti-septic liquids that kill 99% germs abound. But what about those people who can't afford to build a proper toilet. Access to water and clean toilets have become so elusive that people have learnt to live without it.

We need to remind them that they are humans & not animals!

Having access to a clean toilet, cultivating proper sanitary habits are basic rights of every human. And the Domex Toilet Academy (DTA) programme has taken an initiative to make 'open defecation' a thing of the past. They have already brought about a change in the states of Maharashtra & Odisha and the aim now is to establish 24000 toilets in rural India by 2015.


How can you contribute?

Just click on the 'Contribute' tab on www.domex.in as simple as that.

And this one click means a contribution of Rs5 to the #ToiletForBabli initiative  on your behalf.

We while away our time on social sites, click on useless links to links that sport a "You won't believe this.." title, why not spare a click & be a part of this noble cause. I was the 482127th person to have clicked on the site, be the next one.

Click for a cleaner & safer India.

This post is written as a part of Indiblogger's Happy-Hours for Domex #ToiletForBabli campaign.