Jun 16 2014 : The Times of India (Delhi)

‘Nearly 60% rural houses don’t have toilets’

Mahendra Kumar Singh

New Delhi: TNN





The rape and murder of two teenaged girls in Uttar Pradesh has put the focus back on lack of access to private toilets in villages, forcing women and girls to go out to defecate in the open which makes them vulnerable to sexual violence.Lack of toilets is also a problem in slums in cities and towns, but the dangers are greater in rural areas because women and girls must go out into the fields to relieve themselves.
It is no secret that India has the world’s largest population that defecates in the open, but the incident exposed the poor sanitation fa
cilities in rural India which makes women vulnerable to such extreme violence. The Narendra Modi administration has a tough task ahead as according to National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data, 59.4% of rural India defecates in the open. Jharkhand and Odisha are the worst performers with 90.5% and 81.3% of their population without toilets respectively.The 2011 Census painted a much bleaker state of basic amenities in rural India than the NSSO survey as according to it, 69.3% of rural households and 18.6% households in cities and towns do not have toilets.
The ruling BJP has promised in its manifesto to help people build toilets in homes, at schools and in public places to end open defecation. During his election campaign, Modi had said if elected, he’d build
“toilets first, temples later”.The Modi’s dispensation has to come out with some “out-of-the-box” solution as India has been struggling to achieve universal sanitation coverage.
The government had launched the Central Rural Sanitation Programme, a supply-driven scheme with subsidy, in 1986. But the scheme was re-launched in 1999 as demand-driven Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC). In 2012, it was reworked as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) with focus on community-led, demanddriven approach.
The schemes, however, failed to ensure access to private toilets for majority of Indians living in villages.

Jun 03 2014 : The Economic Times (Mumbai)

Citings Think Rural, Act Global

MAMTA KAPUR ET AL





While urban demand for consumer products remains sluggish worldwide, rural markets are growing faster than ever in some of the largest emerging economies.... In China, demand in the countryside has already begun to outstrip demand in the cities.Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in India.
From 2009 to 2012, spending by India's 800+ million rural residents reached $69 billion, 25% more than their urban counterparts spent over the same period. And projected growth rates are astounding: according to recent Nielsen estimates, consumption in rural areas is growing at 1.5 times the rate in urban areas, and today's $12-billion consumer goods market in rural India is expected to hit $100 billion by 2025.
What's more, rural Indians are trading up. Commodities are giving way to branded products, and more expensive goods are replacing entry-level versions, as consumers gain more disposable income. Their increased purchasing power is largely due to the steady migration of manufacturing jobs to the countryside.
Credit Suisse estimates that nearly 75% of the factories that opened in India in the last decade were built in rural areas; they now account for almost 55% of the country's manufacturing GDP and 70% of all new manufacturing jobs.
As a result, per-capita GDP in the countryside has grown at a compound annual rate of 6.2% since 2000, eclipsing the 4.7% urban growth rate.
From “The Globe: Unlocking the Wealth in Rural Markets“