Rural Ministry to join hands with defence body for bio-toilets

Rural Development Ministry would join hands with a leading defence research organisation to push eco-friendly bio-toilets in villages in four states where the menace of open defecation remained unaddressed.
Impressed by the achievement of the Defence Research and Development Establishment (DRDE) in developing low cost bio-toilets, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh today said that members of Women Self Help Groups from Bihar, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh would be given technical training by the defence scientists in setting up bio-digesters in villages.
"In four states, we should get women self-help groups the ownership of technology," he said after inspecting the bio-digesters developed by the Defence R and D Establishment (DRDE) here.

Ramesh said the Rural Ministry will sign an agreement with the DRDE in line with an MoU inked by Railways with the Defence organisation a year ago to install bio-toilets in trains to treat human waste with bacteria to address the sanitation problem.
"Technology lies on the bio-plant. You give the technology to the Women's Self Help Group. How super structure they want...Whether they want tall, medium size, whether they want tiles, whether they want bamboo...It is entirely upto them," Ramesh said.
He said that cost of setting up of inoculums-- a facility to the bio digester that converts the organic waste into methane and carbon-dioxide-- in villages by the Women SHGs will be paid by the Ministry.

Ramesh also said he would speak to Lok Sabha Speaker Meira Kumar to get her permission to set up bio-toilets in Parliament House Complex so that MPs can know of its environmental benefits.
In these bio-toilets, the human waste is treated by bacteria which is benign to the humans. This bacteria converts human waste into water and gases (methane and CO2).