To start a dialogue on this process, the NGOs led by FIN (Friends-in-Need) organised a capacity building workshop on Sunday for all stakeholders like architects, NGOs, researches and corporates.

According to the available data, 2.6 billion people in the world do not have access to toilets and about 42,000 people die every week after drinking water polluted by faecal matter and in India, two out of three people do not have access to a toilet. At the same time 40 to 60 per cent of existing toilets are not being used.

V Ganapathy, adivsor, FIN, said, “60 per cent of the Indian homes do not have toilets. UNICEF study points out more children die due to diarrhoea than from malaria, measles and AIDS. Seepage from septic tanks, open defecation etc cause drinking water pollution, which causes diarrhoea. This brings us to focus, why it is important to have a toilet.”

The plans are to arrive at solutions on the lack of sanitation coverage and to focus on effective usage of available toilets.

The strategy is to build one million toilets largely by mobilising funds from the end-users themselves instead of providing sanitation as a “charity commodity” free of charge, he said.

The government so far has given only subsidies or incentives for constructing toilets. This FINISH initiative plans to bring SNS-REAAL, a Netherlands-based financial institution, to micro-finance this project.

Shyama Ramani, director of FIN, said, “ So far we don’t have a technology for less water or water-free toilets, we call upon the research community to come up with newer cost-effective environment-friendly models.”

The NGOs plan to build these one million toilets in three years in Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Orissa, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh.