India Inc gets charitable
One huge national platform and a leader who currently has Indians eating out of his hands is all that was required to give this national social issue the kind of significance it requires – building toilets. Modi urged Indians to do that on 15th August and by 18th August big companies announced their backing and money for this cause.
Bharti announced a Rs.100 crore budget for toilets in Ludhiana, its home town. TCS pledged another Rs.100 crore. Adani group runs a sanitation project in Gujarat and it will be extending it to Maharashtra, Punjab, Rajasthan and Himachal. The Aditya Birla group aims to build 10,000 facilities this year and its states of focus will be UP, MP, Tamil Nadu, Odisha and Gujarat. HUL plans to build 24,000 facilities by 2015 and ITC has the target of 10,000. Dabur plans to build 80-100 facilities per year but its focus will be villages.
With 70% of Indian households in rural areas lacking any sanitation facilities and one out of five urban households not having an in-house toilet, the need for toilets is very real. And it is amazing that this point was brought forth in Modi’s Independence day speech – it is the best possible way to restore some self respect for those scores of Indians. And it shows too – if the cause is right and put in the right way, the usually tight fisted India Inc is more than generous.