Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

Toilets have been a political issue for decades in India. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "Sanitation is more important than independence."

Narendra Modi, soon after he took over as Indian prime minister on May 26 2014, vowed in his maiden Independence Day address to the nation on August 15 to fulfill Gandhi's dream by having functional toilets in all schools of India by the next Independence Day. This is a tough task considering that there are more than 1.55 million schools in India, where over 230 million children are studying, and tens of thousands of schools still lack this basic facility.

The actual number of schools still without toilets may be huge. The problem is that the government has yet to make this figure available. One hopes Modi will tell the nation on the coming August 15 how many schools got toilets last year, and how many are still without them.

Modi pledged not only functioning facilities but separate toilets for girls, a critical issue since a lack of safe sanitation often forces female students out of school while menstruating. He called on state governments as well as the center to help fulfill his promise.

However, Modi is in for an embarrassment as the August 15, 2015 deadline is less than three weeks away. Corporate India has been a big let down while public sector undertakings (PSUs) have a better record but still lag behind in the mammoth school toilets project. 

As many as 11 big companies in the corporate sector and 67 PSUs have taken on the responsibility of constructing toilets, but over 90 percent of these have not yet reached even the 50 percent completion mark. The central government has asked all 29 states and seven union territories for a status report on the project and the Ministry of Human Resource Development has even told states that it will get directly involved in building facilities to help meet the targets if they are unable to meet the deadline.

For example, PSUs like Coal India and the National Thermal Power Corporation had committed to build 50,469 and 25,410 school toilets by August 15, but had only built 15,879 and 9,664 units by July 20. Corporate entities like the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have done much worse. CII had committed to build 138 school toilets but has built only 23 thus far, while FICCI had made a commitment for 119 but has not built even a single school toilet during this period.

A UNICEF-India study, conducted in 2009, entitled "Hygiene practices in schools during midday meals" conducted in 540 schools in nine states in India on Midday Meal Scheme, revealed that only 51 percent of the schools have a designated hand-washing space and in 44 percent of the schools observed, the hand-washing space was being used. Besides, only 12 percent of schools had soap or detergent available at the hand-washing space, while 49 percent of the students washed their hands using only water. Only two out of five use soap or detergent. Another survey conducted in 392 schools in seven states in India revealed that only nearly one third of the children wash their hands with soap before eating.

It may be Modi who launched the "Clean India, Clean Schools" campaign last year, but it is not as if the previous Congress-led government of Manmohan Singh did nothing. The Singh government also prioritized constructing school toilets without making a song and dance about it.

Consider the following statistics. Out of those schools with functioning toilets, the number with separate toilet facilities for girls increased from 0.4 million (37 percent) in 2005-06 to almost 1 million in 2013-14 (91 percent). That's a significant, if untrumpeted, increase in providing a vitally needed way to help keep young women in education.

Modi must have realized by now that it is easy to announce ambitious schemes but difficult to implement them. Inevitably, the Congress-led opposition will be waiting to poke Modi on yet another point.

The author is a New Delhi-based independent journalist and a political commentator, bhootnath004@yahoo.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Kishkindha