Lalitha Ranjani By Express News Service CHENNAI: Five years and 5,000 toilets — 36-year-old K Selvi aka Sakkimangalam Selvi from Madurai has dedicated her life towards the uplift of others by educating people from the area on the evils of open defecation and the importance of solid waste management. Earlier this month, Selvi was conferred the Swachh Bharat Puraskar by the Ministry of Jal Shakti, and is the only recipient from Tamil Nadu.Selvi has been instrumental in construction of toilets at the homes of the villagers surrounding her area, Sakkimangalam, in Madurai since 2014. The class 12 dropout and mother of three ran a small tailoring business following her marriage. “Six years ago, when the toilet in our house was under construction, I had to defecate in open fields due to the lack of alternate options. It left me feeling embarrassed, and I used to take a half-hour bus trip to Goripalayam and used the pay-and-use toilet there. It was then did I empathise with the struggles of the women in the area, who had to put aside their dignity and safety to attend to nature’s calls,” she said. Chance encounter With the fire lit within her, she had chance meeting with the then-additional collector and project director of the District Rural Development Agency (DRDA), B Rohini Ramdas, in 2014, and found a way forward. Representing her village, Selvi had attended a block-level awareness programme meeting held by DRDA.“I attended the meeting chaired by Rohini Madam, as a proxy. Things took an unexpected turn then, as I heard an IAS officer talk extensively on open defecation and stress on the importance of eradicating the issue. It inspired me to take things into my own hands,” she said.From that moment onwards, there was no stopping Selvi. She went from door to door in her village, explaining the perils of the practice to the locals. She formed an all-woman team, and the half-a-dozen women would go to the fields at 4 am to catch people defecating in the open. Armed with whistles, they would blow it to prevent them from continuing. This, of course, came with its own perils. Miffed at being interrupted, the people would hurl abuses and stones at them, but within a few months, her initiative brought in a radical change in the villagers’ mindset. Roots in social work Her drive and motivation to do her bit for society has its roots in her childhood. “I have always been interested in social work. I formed a 15-member self-help group called Magizham Poo in 2006, and helped locals obtain ration cards, voter ID cards and pension,” said Selvi.She decided to join hands with the district administration to further her cause. She rallied government doctors to recommend the construction of closed toilets to their patients. She spoke to local government school authorities to request for the attendance of students with closed toilets built at their homes to be marked in green, and for those without to be marked in red, to include the next generation to her cause. The net result was better than anyone could have hoped for.“The women and adolescent girls in the area were robbed of privacy and dignity daily. Today, all the houses in the 15 panchayats in Sakkimangalam have closed toilets, all thanks to Selvi. She encouraged us to construct our own toilets, with the use of the government’s financial aid of `12,000 for every twin-leach pit toilet,” said G Nirmala, a 37-year-old local. Selvi has helped construct toilets in Narasingam, Vadipatti, Tiruparankundram, Tiruvadhavur villages, and has been the driving factor for the construction of 1,500 toilets in Sakkimangalam alone. Her success led to her spreading her wings to other villages in the district. After donning titles like Swachh Bharat Mission motivator and master trainer, she is now the coordinator of Solid Waste Management programme, working closely with DRDA, Madurai. Her pillar of support through all this, she said, has been her husband, Karnan. Her mantra is to speak to people plainly, rather than to preach or speak to them from a position of authority. Only then can change occur, she said.

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