Thangjam Achouba who regularly buys insecticides to kill house-flies in the past said, “Now it’s hard to find a fly in my courtyard.” Now almost all the 122 households including those who get subsidy under Below Poverty Line (BPL) in Kachikhul owns a toilet by spending Rs 300 to Rs 1500. However it was a challenging task for local Pradhan H Subashchadra to convince these villagers to take up TSC successfully. “It took me nearly 3 years to convince our villagers,” Subhaschandra who initiated the campaign since 2003 said. His tireless efforts have resulted in him becoming the first and only Nirmal Gram Puruskar (NGP) award winner of the state this year. The President of India Pratibha Patil handed over the award to the promising Pradhan during a function in Guwahati in October last year. NGP is a national award instituted to honour, facilitate and encourage those village bodies or Panchayati Raj institutions which have attained total sanitation in their respective areas in the country.

Besides Pradhan, Anganwadi workers and school teachers of Kachikhul village were also actively involved in making their village free from open-defecation in recent times. Forty five year old and Kachikhul Government Junior High School headmaster S Pradipkumar Singh also said that the basic teaching methods about washing hands and cleanliness help a lot in keeping the children clean in school as well as at home. A medical technician turned ‘local physician’ Angomjambam Mocha, who runs a pharmacy at his Leitong village under Maklang Gram Panchayat said, “I think this is not wrong, the rate of purchasing diarrhea and pile medicines in particular has been decreased by 30 percent since last year”.

Public Health Engineering Department of Manipur is planning to construct as many as 25,013 toilets in Imphal west district out of the state’s target of 2,63,254 within four years time under the supervision of the Department of Drinking Water Supply, Ministry of Rural Development. So far only about 2244 toilets including 2059 in the under below poverty line households and 113 schools have been completed as of now.