Vidya Balan appointed Brand Ambassador for promoting Sanitation in India

The Vice President,  Mohd. Hamid Ansari presenting the Rajat Kamal Award to Ms. Vidya Balan for the Best Actress - The Dirty Picture, at the 59th National Film Awards function, in New Delhi on May 03, 2012. The Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Smt. Ambika Soni, the Ministers of State for Information and Broadcasting,  Chowdhury Mohan Jatua and Dr. S. Jagathrakshakan and the Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting,  Uday Kumar Varma are also seen. Photo© PIB

New Delhi (PIB) --- Noted Bollywood actor Vidya Balan was roped in by the Ministry of Rural Development and the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation as brand ambassador to spread awareness about sanitation and cleanliness in the country. Talking to the media after meeting Balan here, Union Rural Development Minister  Jairam Ramesh said she will appear in ad campaigns to propagate construction and use of toilets. The Minister informed that Balan is the first brand ambassador of the Ministry. According to UNICEF-WHO Joint Monitoring Programme Report 2010, nearly 60 per cent of India's 1.1 billion people still practice open defecation and close to 58% of all open defecations in the World is in India.


Ramesh said that Vidya’s involvement will make the campaign to end open defecation a national obsession. The key areas of intervention on sanitation that may be focused upon are- propogating construction and use of toilets by all, habits of hand washing, personal hygiene and managing waste.

Talking to reporters, Vidya Balan said that this role will work a lot because they are working on a national movement. She said that it is a matter of great honour for her to become the brand ambassador of sanitation campaign and added that it needs to become a national obsession. She has agreed to give her time for the campaign for two years and will be fully involved in the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan--the restructured version of the Total Sanitation Campaign. It may be recalled that India loses 54 billion US dollars that is about 24,000 crore rupees a year due to poor sanitation and hygiene.