Philippe Cullet is Professor of International and Environmental Law at SOAS University of London and a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi.The Right to Sanitation in India: Critical Perspectives, edited by Cullet, Sujith Koonan, and Lovleen Bhullar, represents the first effort to conceptually engage with the right to sanitation and its multiple dimensions in India.
From Cullet's interview with Richa Bansal, Director of Communications at Centre for Policy Research, and in collaboration with Centre for Policy Research, one of India’s leading public policy think tanks since 1973. As shared at the OUP Blog:
Richa Bansal: Where would you situate this book in the socio-political landscape?--Marshal Zeringue
Philipe Cullet: Sanitation has evinced considerable interest from policy-makers, lawmakers, researchers, and even politicians in recent years. Its transformation from a social taboo into a topic of general conversation is evident from the central role of sanitation in recent Bollywood blockbusters, such as Piku (2015), Toilet Ek Prem Katha (2017), and Padman (2018). Toilet Ek Prem Katha is particularly interesting since it directly mirrors the policy framework of the central government that seeks to ensure open defecation free India by 2 October 2019.
In fact, insofar as policymaking and implementation is concerned, sanitation has emerged from the shadows in the past five years. The Swachh Bharat Mission has led to the construction of millions of toilets throughout the country. Several states have been declared “Open Defecation Free” (ODF) in the last couple of years. This is a positive development in terms of emphasising the urgency of addressing the sanitation crisis.
The new focus on policy and implementation also fits well with various judicial pronouncements since the 1990s, where sanitation has been recognised as a fundamental right derived from the constitutional right to life. Yet ongoing policy initiatives are not linked to a rights perspective, and a statutory framework to transform the promise of the judicially recognised right to sanitation into reality is absent. For the right to sanitation to be realised, its multiple dimensions must be...[read on]