The India Post, Chandigarh, 16th July, 2008 :Internationally acclaimed for its sanitation movement, Sulabh International will soon set up a Sanitation university in Gurgaon in Haryana. A Padma Vibhushan recipient, Pathak is well known for his innovative use of biogas by linking Sulabh toilets to fermentation plants that he had designed over three decades ago and which have now become the bywords in the world of sanitation.
"The land for setting up the proposed university has already been acquired in Gurgaon and other formalities for making it operational were in the process," the Founder of the Sulabh International, a non-governmental organisation (NGO) Bindeshwar Pathak shared today.
Pathak added that one of its kind in the world, the Sanitation university will be a deemed university and will be structured much on the pattern of the London School of Economics so far credibility and reputation of its degrees were concerned.
To come up in the next five years, it will be an institute that will impart education in cleanliness—environmental, health and societal. The institute plans to offer post-graduate programmes in various courses of sanitation to science graduates.
Pathak’s rehabilitation programme has helped 36 women scavengers leave their life of humiliation, fetching him much acclaim. "Plans are now on to rehabilitate all human scavengers in India, whose numbers touch 600,000," Pathak said.
How these women’s lives changed—from being illiterate, scavengers and termed as untouchables, to being able to sign their names, selling home-made pickles, fashion accessories and getting absorbed in mainstream life—over a period of just four years, is a story that will be part of the case studies taught in the university.