S Damodaran

S. Damodaran is the founder of Gramalaya, a non-profit that has worked since 1985 to bring household toilets, safe water and hygiene to poor families in villages, towns, coastal areas and tribal regions. He was named for the Padma Shri in 2022 in the field of social work, from Tamil Nadu ^[1].

Toilets for every home

Damodaran was born on 12 March 1962 ^[2]. Over more than 35 years, working with central and state governments, donors and companies, Gramalaya has promoted more than six lakh household toilets under successive sanitation schemes, up to the Swachh Bharat Mission ^[2]. His approach combines toilets with safe drinking water, hygiene education and economic support, giving women and girls greater privacy and safety ^[2].

The first ODF village

On 26 January 2003 the gram sabha of Thandavampatti in Tiruchirappalli district resolved that every household had a toilet and banned open defecation, making it the first village in India declared open-defecation free ^[2]. More than 300 villages and 187 slums in Tiruchirappalli followed, including Kalmandhai, India’s first slum declared free of open defecation, in 2002 ^[2].

In 2000 he introduced community pay-and-use toilets run by women’s self-help groups, a model later cited in the national Five Year Plan document for 2012–17 ^[2]. He designed a “SMART” toilet with an attached bathroom, of which more than 60,000 have been built, set up a toilet technology training centre in 2006, and has promoted reusable cloth sanitary pads to more than 5.9 lakh girls and women ^[2].