RESUMO
More than a century after John Snow identified a hand pump in Broad Street, London as the Primary source of cholera epidemic, then raging through the areas, supply of safe water and providing human excreta disposal facilities to all, still remain illusive targets in most communities in India, particularly in rural areas. Today the urban population of the country is at the interface of the process of development and environmental degradation, concurrently the rural population continues to suffer from lack of sanitation and safe drinking water, malnutrition and ecological insecurity. Ecological degradation brings in its wake, poverty and ill health and they combine to jeopardize the productivity of the country. Unfortunately, however, the costs of their health impact were never considered seriously by the economic planners