Bindeshwar Pathak

Bindeshwar Pathak married Amla in 1965. The couple has three children.

Bindeshwar Pathak was born on April 2, 1943, to Rama Kant Pathak and his wife in a traditional upper-class Brahmin family in Rampur Baghel village in Bihar, India. He received a traditional upbringing, typical for boys of his social stature.

When he was six, he was punished by his grandmother for touching a scavenger woman—then considered untouchable. He was made to swallow cow dung and urine and was then rinsed in holy Ganges water. Over the years he witnessed other cases where the scavenger community was discriminated against and humiliated.

He graduated in Sociology in 1964. As a student he aspired to be a lecturer but failed to score enough marks in his university exams to achieve this dream. Over the ensuing years he worked at odd jobs and was unable to settle successfully in any profession.

In the late 1960s he bagged a temporary writer's assignment with the Mahatma Gandhi Centenary Celebration Committee in Patna and joined the Bhangi-Mukti (scavengers’ liberation) Cell of the Bihar Gandhi Centenary Celebrations Committee. It was during this time that he gained a deeper understanding of the indignity and plight faced by millions of manual scavengers in India.

Deeply moved by the dehumanizing practice of manual scavenging, he established the Sulabh International Social Service Organization in 1970. By this time he had also developed the technology of a two-pit pour-flush toilet (popularly known as Sulabh Shauchalaya) which could be conveniently built in Indian villages.

The idea caught up over the years and in 1973 he had a chance meeting with a municipal officer in Arra town, who sanctioned him Rs 500 to build two public toilets. This proved to a catalyst and soon several other toilets were built all over Bihar. The toilet system spread to neighboring states as well, freeing numerous manual scavengers from their undignified job.

Pathak introduced the pay-and-use system for maintaining the community toilets and bath in 1974. Within a few years, the Sulabh toilets were so popular in liberating the scavengers that the Ministry of Works and Housing, Government of India, in collaboration with the WHO and UNICEF, organized a national seminar in Patna in 1978 on conversion of bucket latrines and liberation of scavengers.

He earned his master's degree in 1980 and his PhD in 1985 from the University of Patna with his thesis on “Liberation of scavengers through Low Cost Sanitation.”

In 1985, he started a training and rehabilitation program for the wards of scavengers in different trades like shorthand, typing, motor driving, mechanics, masonry work, carpentry, etc. with the support of the Government of India and the Bihar State Scheduled Castes Development Corporation.

Bindeshwar Pathak is the founder of Sulabh International which is today the largest nonprofit organization in India. The organization promotes hygienic and sustainable sanitation and is committed towards the causes of human rights, non-conventional sources of energy, waste management and social reforms through education.