Even eight years after Nepal was declared an open defecation-free (ODF) nation, residents of a Musahar Dalit settlement in Dhanusha are still forced to defecate in open spaces. Despite government campaigns on sanitation and significant investment in the sanitation sector, most families in the Pacharhawa Musahar settlement of Shahidnagar Municipality–5 in Dhanusha are still compelled to defecate in open fields.
For local resident Urmila Sada, open defecation has become a daily necessity. Due to the lack of a toilet at home, she goes to the fields late at night or early in the morning in the dark. “It feels shameful to defecate in open spaces, and sometimes landowners even scold us,” she says. “This problem has become even more difficult for women.”
In the settlement, which has more than one hundred households, only three houses have toilets. The remaining families have been defecating in fields, bamboo groves, and riverbanks for years. The ward was declared open defecation-free in 2018. However, this Dalit settlement has remained far from access to sanitation facilities.
According to local resident Shobhendra Sada, around 370 people live in the settlement. Elderly people, women, men, and children are all forced to defecate in open spaces. Local resident Paramdevi Sada says that some families do not have the land required to build toilets, while others are unable to construct them due to financial constraints. She adds that some have not built toilets while waiting for government support.
According to Paramdevi, women are forced to go to the fields after men fall asleep at night or before dawn. “Living in open spaces brings fear of snakes and poisonous insects, and there is also constant fear of being seen by others,” she says. “During the rainy season, the problem becomes even more severe when the fields get flooded.” Most families in the settlement are landless. They neither have sufficient land nor the financial resources to build toilets. As they only have their small houses and no additional land, they are dependent on others’ fields. This has raised questions not only about sanitation but also about human dignity and safety, according to local resident Ramdayal Sada.
According to Ramdayal, the lack of toilets has made the surrounding environment of the settlement increasingly polluted. “Due to the lack of toilets, the risk of diseases such as diarrhoea, dysentery, and typhoid has increased,” he says. “Poor sanitation has particularly affected children and the elderly.”
According to Ramdayal Sada, central secretary of the Harawa-Charawa Rights Forum, more than one thousand families in Shahidnagar Municipality alone are still without toilets. He further states that sanitation problems also persist in other impoverished settlements in local levels of Dhanusha, including Sabaila Municipality, Vidhe Municipality, Mithila Bihari Municipality, and Kshireswornath Municipality.
Nepal was declared an open defecation-free nation in 2018. At that time, it was claimed to be the first ODF nation in South Asia. However, the reality of the Pacharhawa Musahar settlement raises questions about the effectiveness of that declaration. Despite billions of rupees being spent in the name of sanitation campaigns, failure to reach basic facilities to poor, Dalit, and landless communities remains a major challenge, says local youth Kamlesh Yadav of Shahidnagar Municipality. He states that the achievement of being an open defecation-free nation cannot be fully meaningful unless the basic sanitation rights of marginalized Dalit communities are ensured.