From the second he reached maturity till his dying on Tuesday at 80, Bindeshwar Pathak poured his life and power into making India a cleaner place by constructing public bathrooms and enabling Indians from throughout the social spectrum to have entry to scrub sanitation.

Over the years, he earned himself the title “Toilet Man”, horrifying his household and fellow Brahmins, the caste to which he belonged. His neighborhood was aghast at his obsession with organising public bathrooms; for a lot of, bathrooms had been thought-about one thing unclean, by no means to be touched.

Pathak found his calling after seeing the work of guide scavengers, whose job it was to take away human waste from “dry” bathrooms which had no water or flush. He lived with scavenger households within the late Sixties as a part of his PhD analysis.

Dismayed that anybody ought to must do such an inhuman job, he vowed to eradicate it by constructing public bathrooms and bathrooms in properties.

In 1970, he based the NGO, Sulabh International. Three years later, it constructed its first public rest room within the metropolis of Arrah in Bihar, his dwelling state, to indicate the federal government that an affordable twin pit, pour-flush rest room system was attainable.

Sulabh went on to construct practically 1.3 million family bathrooms and greater than 10,000 public bathrooms.

It additionally constructed nearly 10,000 public rest room complexes for the city poor in slums and crowded public locations. These comprised not solely bathrooms however bathing areas and area for folks to do their laundry.

Users pay a nominal price to make use of the complicated and a few even supply cloakrooms, telephones and fundamental medical care. It is estimated that 20 million Indians use them on daily basis.

His rest room designs for producing biogas by connecting Sulabh’s bathrooms to fermentation services are actually in widespread use in lots of underdeveloped nations.

Pathak’s work was a really early precursor to a marketing campaign launched in 2014 by Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister, to construct a rest room in every dwelling.

Apart from his publicity to guide scavenging, Pathak’s curiosity in reforming the lives of the poorest in India arose from a childhood incident that taught him how the bottom castes had been handled as barely human although they had been those preserving properties and environment clear.

One day, he occurred to the touch the sari of the dalit girl who got here to scrub the home on daily basis. When his grandmother observed, she recoiled in horror. “I had been polluted so I had to be purified. My grandmother made the panchagavya (a mix) of curd, milk, ghee (clarified butter) and cow’s urine and dung and said I had to drink it,” he instructed interviewers.

He additionally recalled how for years his father in regulation was too embarrassed to inform his pals what Pathak did for a dwelling.

But Pathak went on to change into extensively appreciated as a social reformer and pioneer, gaining media consideration and awards at dwelling and overseas.

“The results of Dr Pathak’s endeavours constitute one of the most amazing examples of how one person can impact the wellbeing of millions,” mentioned the Stockholm water prize nominating committee in its quotation in 2009.

When Pathak, a sociology graduate, died on Tuesday from a coronary heart assault in Delhi throughout a ceremony to mark India’s Independence Day, the tributes poured in from throughout the political spectrum.

Modi mentioned on Twitter, now generally known as X, that his dying was “a profound loss” for the nation. “He was a visionary who worked extensively for societal progress and empowering the downtrodden.” He added that Pathak had “made it his mission to build a cleaner India”.

Palaniappan Chidambaram, the chief of the opposition Congress social gathering , who knew Pathak personally, recalled him as somebody who “toiled all his life to introduce sanitation to the people of India” and paid tribute to “his farsightedness and missionary work in the field of sanitation”.