Bio-toilets developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation on Tuesday earned praise from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who said that these could go a long way in solving the problem of open defecation in rural India.
He said if these "green, cost effective flush and forget technology is successfully implanted, it will give a big boost to our Total Sanitation Campaign."
"I was very happy to learn that DRDO in collaboration with FICCI has developed a bio-toilet that promises to solve the problem of open defecation in rural India," the Prime Minister said addressing a DRDO awards function in New Delhi.
Dr Singh said, "Application of technology to social benefit programmes should be expanded further."
Recently, Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh had said that India had emerged as the world capital of "open defecation" and this was a "matter of shame, anguish, sorrow, anger."
He had said that the government intended to rid the country of open defecation in the next 10 years and added that the bio-toilets would also help in curbing manual scavenging which was still prevalent in about 15 lakh insanitary latrines.
DRDO's bio-toilet is based on anaerobic biodegradation of organic waste by unique microbial consortium and works at a wide temperature range.
The consortium has been made through acclimatisation, enrichment and bio-augumentation of cold-active bacteria collected from Antarctica and other low temperature areas.
The defence ministry and the rural development ministry have also signed MoUs for installing these toilets in over one lakh gram panchayats in next few years.