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Kamal Kar
Also Known As Kamal da
Sanitation Pioneer
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An Indian participatory development expert who developed Community-Led Total Sanitation in 1999 and 2000 while working in the village of Mosmoil in Rajshahi, Bangladesh, deciding that attitudinal change driven by villagers themselves would last longer than the existing subsidized, top-down approach to latrine building. He founded the CLTS Foundation in Kolkata in 2009 to support the approach's spread, introduced it in more than 60 countries, and was named among Foreign Policy magazine's Top 100 Global Thinkers in 2010. He died on 3 May 2026.
Facts
Notable ForDeveloping Community-Led Total Sanitation, a method that ended subsidized latrine construction in favor of facilitating communities to confront open defecation themselves, and founding the CLTS Foundation to spread the approach worldwide. 3 Cross-Tradition Connections
Concepts and Practices Developed
Sources
1. Institute of Development Studies: Remembering Dr Kamal Kar
Institute of Development StudiesOpening tributeQuote, Opening tribute
The death of Dr Kamal Kar, pioneer of Community-Led Total Sanitation, on May 3 has been devastating for all the people around the world who knew and worked with him.
1. Institute of Development Studies: Remembering Dr Kamal Kar
Institute of Development StudiesTributes sectionQuote, Tributes section
Thanks to Kamal da, talking about 'shit' was no longer a taboo from the mid 2000s onwards.
2. Wikipedia: Community-led Total Sanitation
WikipediaOrigins sectionQuote, Origins section
In 1999 and 2000, Kamal Kar was working in a village called Mosmoil in Rajshahi, Bangladesh, and decided that a system of attitudinal changes by villagers might have a longer-lasting effect than the existing top-down approach involving subsidies from NGOs and government.
2. Wikipedia: Community-led Total Sanitation
WikipediaBackground sectionQuote, Background section
Kar, a participatory development expert from India, was brought in by WaterAid.
3. CLTS Foundation Official Site
CLTS FoundationHomepageQuote, Homepage
The CLTS Foundation was formed by the pioneer of CLTS, Dr. Kamal Kar, to meet the growing demand for a common global platform for practitioners, trainers and users of CLTS.
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