Patna: The state government in Bihar has come in for severe criticism for its order asking school teachers to take pictures of villagers defecating in the open and dissuading them from dirtying the area.

The order issued by the education department has asked schoolteachers to make the rounds of rural areas both in the morning and the evening, keep an eye on those indulging in open defecation and click pictures of them relieving in the open in a bid to shame them.

Authorities have also formed a committee of four to five teachers in respective areas to monitor the progress of the cleanliness drive. Right now, the order has been issued in Muzaffarpur and Aurangabad districts of Bihar.

However, the move has drawn strong protests from the teachers unions for this “undignified” job.

“A teacher’s job is to teach the students, not to click photographs of people defecating in the open. Just imagine what impression we will have in society?” asked a teacher,

Various teachers’ union too have jumped into the controversy and attacked the government for its bizarre order.

“This is the most condemnable duty we have been assigned to. This will totally destroy the education system in the state and push the society in an era of darkness,” Bihar State Secondary Teachers Association general secretary Shatrughan Prasad Singh told the media today.

He said although the teachers were already burdened with various kinds of non-teaching jobs, such as cattle census, general census, election duties, pulse polio campaign and organising social campaigns yet the latest one is very insulting.

“The latest duty to keeping a tab on villagers going out for defecation is very insulting,” he said and urged chief minister Nitish Kumar to instantly withdraw the order. He said although he supports the government’s cleanliness campaign but expecting the teaching community to make down-to-dusk monitoring of open defection is just too much.

Bihar education minister Krishna Nandan Verma, however, finds nothing objectionable in the order. “Teachers are intellectuals and can perform the task of convincing people not to defecate in the open in much better way than others,” the minister said.

“Moreover, they don’t have to keep a tab on such people throughout the day. They will have to take some time off in the mornings and evenings only. This will not affect teaching works,” he claimed adding the cleanliness campaign being the national programme must have the cooperation of every section of society.

The level of sanitation is very alarming in Bihar. According to an official report, only 33.84 per cent families in the state have toilets at home whereas the rest are still compelled to defecate in the open.

A report of the Centre for Science and Environment, a New Delhi-based research and advisory body, too presents a shameful picture of Bihar on the sanitation front.

According to the study, around 99 per cent of the expenditure of the state has gone towards building of toilets. However, the abysmal quality of the toilets built has meant their usage has been very low.

“Bihar has converted less than 1 per cent of the total dysfunctional toilets in the country into functional ones,” said Sushmita Sengupta, the lead researcher behind the CSE study.

The CSE’s research findings further state that the target of 100 per cent household toilet coverage in Bihar could happen only by 2033 given the current rate of toilet construction.