Of the 72 million residents of Tamil Nadu, the lush and hilly state at the southernmost tip of India, more than half live in rural villages.

From June to December, Tamil Nadu is inundated with thunderstorms and monsoons that cool the hot climate and moisten the dry air. But for the rest of the year, the state is dry and drought-prone. Rural families must live on a few liters of water a day, sourced from government-filled tanks around the city.

Mrs. Aarayi emigrated to Tamil Nadu from her home in Sri Lanka as a young bride. Now 85, she has spent the majority of her life in the village of Kannanurpalayam. Her grandson’s family lives with her in a small, one-room home made of mud and stone and covered with a tiled roof.

An unreliable community toilet

Two-hundred fifty homes in her community have toilets, but many still use the community toilet, as Mrs. Aarayi and her family did before their new SATO toilet was installed.

Compared to other villages where residents simply relieve themselves outside, the presence of a community toilet is a step in the right direction. But as Mrs. Aarayi’s granddaughter Sharmila explained, the toilet is often unusable without enough water to clean or flush it. When that happens, villagers without toilets must relieve themselves outside, a phenomenon known as open defecation.

India’s fight against open defecation

Open defecation is a major problem for India. In 2011, only 32% of rural households in India had toilets. And a 2018 study by the Research Institute for Compassionate Economics suggests that as many as 43% of rural residents still defecate in the open.

But open defecation and a lack of sanitation infrastructure is costly for the nation and its people. Waste contaminates ground and drinking water, which causes infectious diseases and even death.

To combat this problem, India launched an initiative called the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) in 2014. It aims to eradicate open defecation by October of this year. As part of the initiative, the government pays families a subsidy to construct a toilet in their home, making the technology more accessible to everyday people.

A new toilet for the village

Local NGOs in partnership with the SBM brought SATO toilet pans to Mrs. Aarayi’s village. When she heard a new toilet was available, she decided to install it in her home.

In order to get funding, families must show their dedication to the project by digging the hole in preparation for construction. Mrs. Aarayi wasn’t able to dig, but her granddaughter Sharmila and her grandson’s wife took on the digging while their husbands were away doing agricultural day labor in other parts of the state.

The men aren’t the only ones who work in this village. While the men earn money through hard labor, women stay behind to fetch water in the morning and evening, wash dishes, cook, and clean. On top of that, people in rural areas are guaranteed 100 days of work a year from the government, building infrastructure, cleaning up the village, working the fields, or other tasks. Most women choose to do this to earn extra money for the family.

Safe sanitation in the home

Since having the SATO toilet installed—the first of its kind in the village—Mrs. Aarayi and her grandchildren no longer have to trek out to the community toilet or open fields at early hours of the morning to beat the crowds, stepping around bugs and poisonous snakes to use the toilet.

Sharmila has been promoting the new toilets since she heard about them. SATO toilets are much easier to manage than traditional rural Indian toilets, because they require less than 1 liter of water to flush and are easy to clean and maintain. Made of plastic, they withstand high temperatures and accidents without breaking, unlike the ceramic toilets that many villagers have.

As more development encroaches on the village, taking away bushes and trees around their homes, the villagers have fewer and fewer places to relieve themselves outside. The need for a toilet, one that’s easy to use and stands the test of time, is becoming greater.

“Even just getting a toilet would have been satisfactory,” Sharmila said. “Now that we have it and it’s of good quality, we’re more than satisfied.”