NID’s public toilet project may be launched in state/Gujarat could be the first state to launch the pilot project of ‘public bathrooms 4 slum dwellers

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NID’s public toilet project may be launched in state/(Good intiative by Sulabh and NID designer...hope it gets implemented!!...VT)

Abir Mullick, a Fulbright–Nehru scholar-in-residence at NID, and his team is pursuing research on public health and sanitation; efforts to launch the project in state are on

Ahmedabad Mirror Bureau

Posted On Friday, June 24, 2011 at 02:44:19 AM

Efforts to launch the pilot project in Gujarat are being made as this is the place where the project has been conceptualised, said Mullick A concrete roof for slum dwellers of Ahmedabad might be an improbable dream but they can be thankful enough to National Institute of Design (NID) for working towards giving them clean and functional toilets, which can be customised in the near future. And, Gujarat could be the first state to launch the pilot project of ‘public bathrooms for slum dwellers of India’ in the next six-months. Abir Mullick, a Fulbright–Nehru scholar-in-residence at NID, and his team of associate designer at NID Shikha Agarwal along with current students, Ashok Kumar and Pushpalata Swarankar, are pursuing research on public health and sanitation under the Jamshedji Tata-NID universal design research chair, supported by Sulabh International. “We are making efforts to launch the pilot project in Gujarat as this is the place where the project has been conceptualised. For this, we are in talks with the state government,” said Mullick, the principal investigator of the project. The team which began working on the project in October 2010, is in the process of making the prototype of ‘public bathrooms’. “We closely studied the life and needs of slum dwellers before designing this concept. Designed for mass manufacture, the toilets allow mass customisation and facilitate off-site production and on-site installation. We have applied for patent design. Public bathrooms must be flexible, so through inter-changeability of parts, it is possible to introduce many bathroom designs within a single system,” explained Mullick, at a public lecture at the institute on Thursday. Abir Mullick delivered a public lecture at NID on Thursday Talking about the need for public bathrooms, Mullick, who a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology in USA, said, “The universal design of public bathrooms in India must focus on self-empowerment, offer personal assistance and be socially inclusive.” The team, which is in the process of making a working prototype of their design of public bathrooms for the underprivileged, studied more than 80 santitation sites across the nation including 24 in Ahmedabad and interviewed around 300 people. “We visited slums in Paldi, Vadaj and Vasna. Our design has been conceptualised by considering social, family and migratory practices of the slum dwellers. It will be usable by all including the differently-abled, independent and dependent people,” he added.