Former President Kovind advocates for strategy in sanitation studies
02/04/2023
New Delhi, Apr 2: Former President Ram Nath Kovind on Sunday urged academicians to formulate strategies to promote issues relating to sanitation and its studies. Delivering the inaugural address at the National Conference on Sociology of Sanitation in Delhi Kovind termed the study of sanitation as a tool for social change. The three-day national conference is being attended by large numbers of Vice Chancellors and professors from different universities. The conference is being organised by the Sulabh International School of Action Sociology.
The former President appreciated the mission of Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his nationwide campaign for toilets and igniting the mind of the masses towards sanitation. He lauded the efforts of Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh Inter-national, for his role in the field of sanitation and social services. He recalled Dr Pathak's campaign for the upliftment of the downtrodden by eradicating manual scavenging from India. Kovind lauded Dr Pathak's vision for organising a national conference on such an important subject and giving prominence to the Sociology of Sanitation.
Prime Minister Naren-dra Modi also wrote a letter to the national conference and noted the "exemplary" efforts of the Sulabh Inter-national School of Action Sociology.
"The holistic efforts of Sulabh International in furthering cleanliness, providing access to safe sanitation, promoting health and hygiene by building toilets, establishing biogas plants and building model villages are exemplary. It is in this context that this conference assumes a special significance since it is being spearheaded by an organisation with a track record of working in this domain," PM Modi said in the letter.
The Prime Minister further added, "making people aware of the transformational outcomes of sanitation and cleanliness will also help in preparing domain-specific professionals and generate more opportunities for employment & self-employment." Addressing the conference, former Chief Justice of India TS Thakur called upon scholars to give an extra push to the study of the sociology of sanitation in universities.
Dr Pathak in his keynote address said, "The National Conference on Sociology of Sanitation is an affirmation of my intervention with social truth and society's most challenging issue such as the liberation of manual scavengers who were working to clean the bucket toilet by carrying human excreta on their heads, which led me to invent two-pit pour-flush ecological compost toilet. Dr Pathak further said that the Sociology of Sanitation is being taught in 25 universities in India. He emphasised that this course is like Mahatma Gandhi's basic education model which will give the students passing out from this course to become skill-ed & self-employed. (ANI)
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