Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, who was awarded Nikkei Asia Prize, 2018 for Culture and Community, is the founder of
- (a)Bachpan Bachao Andolan
- (b)PRS Legislative Research
- (c)Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement
- (d)Smile Foundation
Correct — C, the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement. Bindeshwar Pathak founded the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation in 1970, combining a piece of engineering with a social argument. The engineering was a low-cost twin-pit pour-flush latrine that did not need a sewer line or a human being to empty it; the social argument was that this technology could end the occupation of manual scavenging and the caste degradation attached to it. Sulabh went on to work in environmental sanitation, waste management, non-conventional energy and education. The Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture and Community came to him in June 2018, in Tokyo, a few months before this paper.
- (a)Bachpan Bachao Andolan — Bachpan Bachao Andolan was started in 1980 by Kailash Satyarthi, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014. It campaigns against bonded labour, child labour and trafficking — a different founder, a different cause and a different prize.
- (b)PRS Legislative Research — PRS Legislative Research is a Delhi-based non-profit set up in September 2005 to make the legislative process better informed and more transparent. It analyses bills and briefs legislators and the public; it has nothing to do with sanitation.
- (d)Smile Foundation — Smile Foundation is a separate Indian development organisation working on education, healthcare and livelihoods for underprivileged children and families. It is not Pathak's, and it is not the body the Nikkei citation named.
Manual scavenging — the removal of human excreta by hand — was made illegal in India by the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act of 1993, and again by a stronger law in 2013. Sulabh's contribution was to attack the problem at its technical root rather than only through prohibition: dry latrines existed because there was no affordable alternative, and the twin-pit design supplied one. The second pit is used while the first composts, and the resulting material is safe to handle after about two years, so no one need enter a pit while it is fresh.
Award-and-person items are best learnt as three-part facts — the person, the organisation and the field — because a question can be set on any one of the three. Here the field is the fastest route: Pathak's name is inseparable from toilets and sanitation, and only one option in the list is a sanitation body. A present-day note is due, since these papers are now several years old: Bindeshwar Pathak died in New Delhi on 15 August 2023, at the age of 80.
- Bindeshwar Pathak founded the Sulabh International Social Service Organisation in 1970.
- Sulabh's twin-pit pour-flush latrine was designed to remove the need for sewers and for manual emptying.
- He was awarded the Nikkei Asia Prize for Culture and Community in June 2018 in Tokyo.
- He died in New Delhi on 15 August 2023, aged 80.
- Bachpan Bachao Andolan, offered as a distractor, was founded in 1980 by Kailash Satyarthi, the 2014 Nobel Peace laureate.
- Confusing the Nikkei Asia Prize with the Ramon Magsaysay Award; both are Asian awards but they are distinct.
- Attaching an organisation to the wrong founder — each of the three distractors here has a real and different one.
- Treating a person's most recent award as their defining fact; the organisation and the field are what questions usually turn on.
Asked as a person-to-organisation item where all four options are genuine organisations with different founders.
The Ramon Magsaysay Award winner Shanta Sinha is known as
- (a) A campaigner for urban sanitation
- (b) An anti-child labour activist
- (c) An organizer of rain-water harvesting schemes
- (d) An activist for the welfare of poor rural women
Answer(b) An anti-child labour activist
The same award-and-person shape, and instructive for a further reason — its option (a), a campaigner for urban sanitation, is the field that belongs to Pathak rather than to Shanta Sinha. The two questions together are a good drill in keeping person, cause and organisation attached to one another.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Kailash Satyarthi, who shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, founded
- (a)Sulabh International
- (b)Bachpan Bachao Andolan
- (c)Smile Foundation
- (d)Pratham
Answer(b) Bachpan Bachao Andolan — started in 1980 to campaign against child labour, bonded labour and trafficking.
- practice — not a real PYQ
The technology most closely associated with the Sulabh movement is
- (a)the twin-pit pour-flush latrine
- (b)the biogas digester for household cooking
- (c)the reverse osmosis water purifier
- (d)the solar cooker
Answer(a) the twin-pit pour-flush latrine — a low-cost design that needs no sewer line and no manual emptying while the pit is fresh.