Quality of life improves with good hygienic practices, access to proper sanitary facilities and improvement of environmental sanitation.  Adoption of sanitary practices also reduces disease burden, particularly those which are water borne diseases.  This is all the more relevant to the people living below poverty line, who suffer more from such common and preventable diseases due to lack of access to safe water and sanitation facilities.  In the interest of sustainable development, access to sanitary facilities and use of safe and quality drinking water have been adduced high priority and the earlier Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) was scaled up and launched as Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) as a centrally sponsored programme in the year 1999.  The programme is currently being implemented by this department in West Bengal in all the eighteen rural districts including the DGHC area in Darjeeling.

The modalities for taking up sanitation programme in an intensive manner in collaboration with the NGOs was developed in Midnapore during the early nineties as described in earlier annual reports.  Under this model responsibility of delivery of sanitation related services is entrusted with a suitable NGO in each block on recommendation of the Zilla Parishad.  The NGO sets up a Rural Sanitary Mart (RSM) for manufacturing various sanitary items and arranges to install the same as per demand through their trained personnel.  Costs of various sanitary items are fixed by the state government and the RSMs are allowed certain profit for financial self-sufficiency.  The strength of the programme is participation of the people, which is promoted by the panchayats through generation of awareness about the good hygienic practices.  The panchayats are responsible for taking up the campaign in their respective areas and developing an efficient system for delivery of sanitation related supplies and services in collaboration with suitable NGO.  Such partnership with the NGOs started as a strategy during the nineties and the same was further strengthened under the TSC.  Considerable success has been achieved through the implementation of TSC in the state. At the beginning of the last decade of the twentieth century, only 12.31% of the rural households in the state had access to sanitary toilets and this rose to around 27% as per Census, 2001.  After the TSC was launched as many as 49,68,459 numbers of household toilets have been constructed in the state against a target of constructing 91,81,021 such toilets.  More than twelve lakh toilets were constructed prior to launching of the TSC under the Central Rural Sanitation Programme.  As a result of that around 74% of the rural households had access to sanitary toilets at the end of March 2007.

             In order to achieve desirable impact in disease prevention as well as for ensuring minimum standard of living to the entire citizen it is essential that every household in any particular area has access to sanitation facilities and adopt hygienic practices.  Nandigram II Block was declared the first Block in the country to have 100 percent access to sanitary toilets in the year 2001.  To promote such full coverage as well as to ensure total stoppage of the practice of open defecation and maintain cleanliness the GOI has launched the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP).  The NGP is awarded to Gram Panchayat, Panchayat Samity and the Zilla Parishads where there is no open defecation, access to toilets in all households as well as institutions like schools, ICDS centres etc.  Till March, 2007, as many as 604 Gram Panchayats and 16 Panchayat Samitis of the state have been awarded Nirmal Gram Puraskar.  East Midnapore and Howrah districts have claimed completion of toilet facilities in all the households and institutions within their jurisdictions and their claims are being verified.  The present status of receiving NGP in different districts is shown in the Table below

Progress of Receiving Nirmal Gram Puraskar by GPs

Name of District	2004-05	2005-06	2006-07	Total
Coochbehar	0	0	16	16
Jalpaiguri	0	0	7	7
DGHC	0	0	0	0
Siliguri MP	0	0	0	0
D. Dinajpur	0	0	0	0
U. Dinajpur	0	0	1	1
Malda	0	0	0	0
Murshidabad	0	0	4	4
Birbhum	0	0	7	7
Burdwan	1	16	69	86
Bankura	0	0	9	9
Purulia	0	0	0	0
Paschim Medinipur	4	43	24	71
Purba Medinipur	0	22	137	159
Hooghly	2	8	27	37
Howrah	2	25	86	113
Nadia	0	12	23	35
N.24 Pgns	1	0	47	48
S.24 Pgns	0	0	11	11
Total	10	126	468	604