They’ve Witnessed What Lack of Toilets Can Do. Now They’re Making Sure No One Else Has To

India’s sanitation story is filled with champions who show what’s possible when dignity becomes a priority. From rural volunteers to engineers and lifelong activists, individuals across the country are building toilets, rebuilding systems, and restoring confidence in people who have lived too long without this basic right. This World Toilet Day, we shine light on those turning simple structures into life-changing solutions.

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1) SHRI: Reimagining shared sanitation with data

Founders: Anoop Jain, Chandan Kumar, and Prabin Pradhan
Organisation: Sanitation and Health Rights India (SHRI)

SHRI witnessed firsthand how open defecation harms dignity, especially for women and girls, and began by building biogas-linked community toilets in Bihar.

As India ramped up construction of 600,000 shared toilets under Swachh BharatMission, SHRI pivoted — focusing on reviving dysfunctional government toilets instead of building new ones. Their model is simple but powerful: renovate, staff, digitise, and maintain.

A real-time digital system tracks cleanliness, uptime, water availability, and gender-disaggregated usage, ensuring transparency and safety. In 2023–24 alone, SHRI supported millions of toilet uses with a remarkable 99.5% uptime at an operational cost of just 3 cents per use.

Looking ahead, SHRI’s 2025–28 strategy includes partnering with independent researchers to standardise cleaning protocols.

2. Padma Shri Marachi Subburaman: The EcoSan pioneer who built 1.2 lakh toilets

For over five decades, Marachi Subburaman has championed rural sanitation long before it became a national mission. Raised in poverty without basic facilities, he understood the deep connection between sanitation and dignity.

Through his organisation SCOPE (Society for Community Organization and People’s Education), Subburaman introduced low-cost, community-driven sanitation across Tamil Nadu often facing social resistance and even threats for challenging taboos.

His most revolutionary work is the promotion of EcoSan toilets in regions where groundwater contamination is a major concern. These waterless, twin-chamber toilets separate urine, wash water, and faeces; the waste is dried and transformed into manure, offering both ecological and health benefits.

Since 1996, SCOPE has built 25,000 ecosan toilets and 1 lakh leech pit toilets across the states of Tamil Nadu, Gujarat and Rajasthan. At 76, Subburaman still sees his work as nothing more than “service to humanity.”

3. Eram: Solar-powered toilets 

Since 2014, Thiruvananthapuram-based Eram Scientific has been deploying India’s first automated, self-cleaning, solar-powered toilets. Built with stainless steel for tough, low-resource environments, these units work even where electricity or conventional sanitation is scarce. 

Each toilet flushes before and after use with just 1.5 litres of water — far less than the 8 –10 litres of a regular flush — and the floor cleans itself after every tenth use. 

Solar-powered lighting, sensor-based monitoring through GPRS, and anaerobic waste treatment make them a low-maintenance, eco-friendly option for public spaces. According to the company, these smart toilets now operate in over 25,000 locations across 23 states, serving more than 15,000 users daily.

4. Sruthi Babu: The 27-year-old innovator behind the world’s first toilet wheelchair

When biomedical engineer Sruthi Babu saw a paralysed elderly man whisper that it was “better to die than live like this,” she realised how deeply sanitation is tied to dignity — especially for people with limited mobility.

Along with her father, mechanical engineer KK Babu, she founded Sahayatha, the world’s first wheelchair equipped with a hygienic, water-cleaning toilet system. After 118 design iterations, they developed a wheelchair that includes: a water tank, jet spray, removable waste container and a stretcher-convertible frame to reduce caregiver strain.

What began as a small innovation from a Coimbatore workshop is now patented in 140+ countries and has already restored independence and comfort to more than 300 users.

5. The Nellivasal school volunteers

In the government school of Nellivasal village, Tamil Nadu, students were forced to defecate in the open. Things changed when news broke that a young girl had died from constipation due to lack of sanitation — a tragedy that moved architect Barnala Michael, filmmaker Vishnupriya, and local volunteers to act.

With crowdfunding support from the Cuckoo organisation, they built three low-cost, eco-friendly toilets and an open bathing area in just one month. Their thoughtful design included:

• ferrocement structures to reduce cost

• Polycarbonate sheets for natural light

• A leech-pit waste system to convert waste into manure

• Bright colours and oval shapes to make toilets child-friendly

Today, around 80 students use these safe, functional toilets daily. The team hopes this simple, replicable model can inspire similar school sanitation initiatives nationwide.

Sanitation may be one of the most overlooked public health issues in India, but these changemakers remind us that toilets are not simply structures — they are instruments of dignity, safety, gender justice, and opportunity.

Sources:

Padma Shri for M Subburaman, South India's 'Toilet Man': by Clean India Journal, published on 2 February 2021

SHRI strategic Plan 2025-2028: by Sanrights.Org

Eram Facts and Figures: by EramScientific.com

Feature Image: The Better India