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In a mango orchard of a Karnataka village, a group of picnickers, councillors, journalists, agriculturalists and social activists, were chatting about sanitation.

By the time they rolled up their mats in the Allahally village, 45 kms north of Bangalore, they were carrying in their bag a plan to set up an ecologically well-grounded sanitation system in their town.

That was the beginning of a slow, eco-sanitation revolution that is now sweeping through Doddaballapura in Karnataka.

In little more than a year, the eco-sanitation concept is making some headway, flushing away the non-existent sewage system of this semi-urban town, which is a stronghold of the weaving and power-loom industry, reports Grassroots Features.

The quiet revolution has even been extended to nearby villages.

The first eco-toilet, which was set up in the compound of Swami Vivekananda High School in November 2005, has proved to be a success story and has even created ripples in organic farming circles in the neighbourhood.

Doddaballapura town, which is known as the Manchester of Karnataka, boasts of more than 15,000 power-looms and a government-sponsored "apparel park" coming up on the outskirts of the town. But for its population of 100,000 people, in terms of sanitation and sewage, the town is a big failure.

For, despite its industrial background and wealth, there is no proper sewage system in the town, and open drains are the conduits for solid waste from toilets. And thanks to the absence of a proper sewage system, even the nearby water tank of Nagarakare has been contaminated.

So the time was ripe for the combine of NGOs and government offices to step into the troubled sewers. A syndicate of the Mythri Sarva Seva Samithi, Parisara Prajna Kendra, UNICEF and KRWSSA (Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency) moved forward to address the sanitation issue.

Among the picnickers was MB Gurudev, the secretary of the Doddaballapura school that was used for the experiment. Today the school has become a benchmark for eco-toilets in the district.

When the eco-toilet was first set up at the far end of the school compound, nobody quite expected it to be a phenomenal success. The two eco-toilets built at an admittedly high cost of Rs 50,000 became the exclusive domain of girls in classes 8 and 9, which effectively meant that only some 80 girls could use it.

But 15 months down the line, the swanky clean toilet, devoid of the smells associated with public toilets, is witness to the dedication of the schoolgirls. A combination of the students' weekly roster system of cleaning and sweeping the toilets before classes began and the features of eco-toilet systems proved its efficacy.

As Pusphpalatha, a class 9 student says, this has taught her to keep her toilet at home clean, much to the astonishment of her parents. They hardly believe her when she tells them that she helps maintain the toilets in the school as well. As for Mamta, her parents ask her why she does the cleaning in school and not at home.

According to Hulikal Nataraju, the headmaster of the school, now the boys too are clamouring for their own eco-toilet, with promises to keep it equally clean.

Inspired by the success, the Doddaballapura City Muncipal Corporation installed the first public eco-toilet in the state five months ago. Located adjacent to the town's new municipal public park, the toilet, which was initially maintained by NGOs, is now being looked after by the Municipal Corporation.

Another eco-toilet has been built at the 200 strong Government Girls' Middle School in Doddaballapura town.

The nearby farming village of Nagasandra with 150 households, now boasts of nine eco-toilets. According to DR Nataraj, the secretary of Parisara Prajna Kendra, who has conducted awareness workshops for introducing eco-toilets, the response has been more than positive.

Jayamma and her family of six are proud of their clean, dry toilet, which they have been using for five months. The only person in her household who has resisted the toilet so far is the grandfather. Jayamma's teenaged daughter enjoys the privacy and the absence of offensive odours in this new extension to their home.

Ironically, most of the nine toilets in Nagasandra village are given a pride of place in the farmer's homes. They are located in front of their mud farmhouses, and can be seen easily by any passer-by.

Few users are aware of the kind of research and hard work that have gone into creating these efficient, user-friendly eco-toilets.

When KS Manoj Kumar, a coordinator for the Karnataka Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency, took a two-year sabbatical and enrolled as an M-tech student at Mysore's Environmental Engineering Department of Sri Jayachamrajendra College, he and his team got busy designing and developing their version of the eco-toilet.

Almost at the same time, a team at the Mythri Sarva Seva Samithi was collaborating with Dutch NGO Waste Wise Trust, focusing their attention on a sanitation system for the underprivileged. A baseline survey of 1,000 households in Doddaballapura, conducted by the Parisara Prajna Kendra, had given them some idea of the problems in the area. Mythri took about six months to develop its own urine separator pan.

Although both these groups were working in isolation, the final marriage of ideas and concepts resulted in the Doddaballapura model. Basically, the toilet is elevated above the ground, and has three separate outlets — for urine, excreta and the water used for cleaning, which are collected in separate chambers.

The elevation is a great advantage in places where there is a high water table, in a rocky terrain or in areas with water shortage. Keeping the toilet waste above the soil also prevents soil contamination and makes the removal of solid and liquid matter easy.

The vaults built to collect the excreta are layered with ash after every use to convert the solid waste into compost and prevent odours. This chamber would only need to be emptied once a year or so depending on usage. The urine is collected in barrels outside the unit and dispatched to farmers to be used as organic manure. Costs have been high but with every model, the price has been reduced and the design has evolved with each version.

Prakash and Kusumam's two-and-a-half acre farm has an assorted crop of sugarcane, banana and areca nut trees. A plot of banana plants where fertilisers from the eco-toilets were tried out has shown a marked difference from the plot where conventional fertilisers were used. The three-month-old banana trees that were "urine-fed" tower more than two feet above the others.

Devaraju, a farmer in the village, claims the banana crop he harvested was larger with the urine dilution treatment and that the leaves were darker and longer.

A controlled study of 50 maize plants irrigated by urine in Nagasandra village as opposed to those chemically treated has convinced the farmers of the dramatic increase in yield, said S Harish Babu.

The Swami Vivekananda School's kitchen garden experiment, too, had similar results. The vegetables and fruits yielded a larger crop, much to the amazement of the students.

But it is still an uphill task and as MS Manoj Kumar says: "There are two challenges we face now, we have to motivate people to move away from open air defecation and teach them the ecological option."