Kaise Banega Swachh India - Kam Paani Mein Zyaada Suraksha | BSI
The Indian cultural and religious space hosts many key congregations every year – where a large number of people gather. These congregations often become a breeding ground for disease. Therefore, we decided to reach out to pilgrims & people at large and educate them about the importance of hand washing and ill effects of open defecation. We started the journey during the Nashik Kumbh Mela in 2015, with the ‘Kam Paani Mein Zyada Suraksha’ initiative. We have been committed to expand this initiative and hence, in 2016, Dettol & Harpic joined hands with the Simhastha Kumbh in Ujjain which is considered as the world’s largest religious congregation that takes place every 12 years. It was obvious that a mass gathering at such a stage would not only increase Ujjain’s water demand but would also pose a serious health risk to devotees attending the festival. Hence, Dettol along with Harpic decided to take the initiative of protecting Ujjain and educating people about healthy hygiene practices. Now, we are looking to partner with smaller congregations – such as Nauchandi mela, Sohnpur mela etc. as well.
Kumbh Mela is one of the world's largest religious congregations and witnesses 30 million+ people and pilgrims from across the country. The brand distributed Dettol hand sanitisers and equipped 100 volunteers with Dettol Liquid Handwash along with an efficient water sprayer to help people clean their hands. The volunteers also distributed informative education material through flyers to pilgrims and “Sadhugrams” for raising awareness around healthy hand washing habits. Besides this, a variety of media mix including radio, leaflets and public announcements were used to convey the message of following healthy hand washing habits. Radio Vishwas was used to advertise the activation on radio. 100 bio-digester toilets were managed for 30 Days, which were used by approx. 15 Lac people.
The campaign for Nashik Kumbh lasted for two months (August & September) and targeted 6.7 million pilgrims and saved 3 million litres of water. With such impressive results, Nashik Kumbh Mela truly became a ‘Dettol ka Dhula Kumbh Mela’.
For the Ujjain Kumbh mela, we managed to get 1.15 crore Pledge, 1.05 Crore hands were sanitized through Dettol Sanitizer and 9.68 Lac hands washed by Dettol Liquid with water saving mechanism.