'India's toilet man' Bindeshwar Pathak dead: His life, contributions, achievements
Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of Sulabh International, died at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Delhi, on Tuesday. He was 80. He was known for rallying against open defecation and the manual scavenging of human waste. He pioneered sanitation services in India and constructed around 1.3 million household toilets. Another 54 million government-run toilets are based on Sulabh's innovative design.
Death due to cardiac arrest
A close friend of the sociologist disclosed that Pathak passed away due to cardiac arrest at around 1:40pm on Tuesday. Reportedly, just hours before his untimely death, he hoisted the national flag on Independence Day at his office in Delhi. He collapsed soon after that.
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Awarded Padma Bhushan in 1991
Pathak was conferred the Padma Bhushan, India's third-highest civilian award, in 1991, and various other global awards, too. He was also a Congress MP from Bihar's Bhagalpur. In 1968, he joined the Bhangi Mukti Cell of the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebrations Committee, which worked to eradicate manual scavenging. He lived with Dalit families as part of his research and established Sulabh International in 1970.
Pathak popularized pour-flush toilet
Pathak was born in a village in Bihar's Vaishali district in 1943. He graduated in Sociology from the Banaras Hindu University (BHU) in 1964 and completed his master's degree in 1980 from the University of Patna. Pathak is credited with mitigating environmental pollution by popularizing the pour-flush toilet against dry latrines, which manual scavengers were forced to clean.
