“Now my son-in-law stays with us for two months every year

Valaiyapatty is a village located near the foot hill region at Kulithalai, Karur district, Tamil Nadu. In order to meet Vijayalakshmi, a customer of sanitation loan given by GUARDIAN, Milaap’s partner, I reached there. Since, Vijayalakshmi was not available in the village I met Shantha, another customer of the same JLG. She is the mother of two married daughters and lives in this village with her husband. Her husband is a daily wage agriculture laborer. Since her childhood Shantha was never subjected to safer and hygienic practice of close defecation. She said (shyly), “I had no toilet in my parent’s house as well. And after 23 years of marriage, now, I have this toilet at home.”
 
Shantha’s elder son-in-law works as a caterer in Ship Corporation and belongs to Bangalore. She said, “He spends eight months on the deck. Earlier, he used come for a few days during his break months with the family. But, since we didn’t have a toilet, he used to avoid staying with us.” She said that he had demanded to install a toilet. Similarly, the younger daughter who lives in Thuraiyur also asked her mother to build a toilet at home as her children used to complain. Shantha said, “We had a desire to have a toilet after their recommendations but had no enough savings.” Shantha had met one of the GUARDIAN Field Officers at her NREGA fieldwork who had explained the easy way to install a toilet through a microloan. She said, “We decided to avail the loan as the documentation was quite easy and the loan tenure was also less.” After investing Rs. 6,000 from her savings into the provided loan amount of Rs. 14,000 she completed the construction of toilet within three months of receiving the amount. The toilet she opted to build was a leach pit model with a pit of six rings. She said, “Having a toilet at home is one of the most secure feelings, especially during night times.” After a pause she added, “Now, my son-in-law stays for two months with his family in a year. And my younger daughter also doesn’t hesitate to bring her children now.” Shantha has been suffering from severe knee joint pain since last one year and therefore she no longer goes for NREGA work on the fields. She said, “I’m thankful to every lender who has crowd-funded for my loan otherwise it could be very hard for me to walk a mile with this pain.” Later, she said that the doctor had prescribed her to install a western commode in the toilet to relieve her knee pain. Wishing her to get it installed soon, I thanked her for giving me her precious time.