On Open Defecation, Hygiene and India Shining – Part – II
Following on from Part-I last week. First in this part, excerpts from Out of the fields, behind closed doors by Tasneem Nashrulla (emphasis mine). This gives some hope.
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Like most women who prefer to visit the ladies’ room together, the women of Sakhara village in Vidarbha’s Yavatmal district also answered their nightly nature’s call in groups. Except it wasn’t for midnight banter, but for their safety.
Because right till early 2005, the ladies’ latrine in this tiny hamlet, located about 753 km north-east of Mumbai, was an open field.
Today, this village housing 62 families has 50 functional toilets. In November 2005, it received an award from the state government as the first ‘open defecation-free village’ in the Pandharkawda block of Yavatmal.
…“We used to sit down, look around here and there to make sure there were no men around, quickly do our business and scamper off,†grins Anusay Gonivar, a feisty 60-year-old and one of the village’s key SHG members.
While the men’s loo (read open ground) was a fair distance away, squatting in a field unprotected from prying eyes was unnerving for the women, especially at night.
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“We had to wake up our neighbours for company,†says Pushpabai Gutmulkuvar (54), another SHG member.
…Much of rural India has benefited from the government’s Nirmal Gram Yojana introduced in 2000, to ensure open-defecation free villages. Nearly 3,450 villages in Maharashtra have been declared open-defecation free thanks to this scheme, which highlights the issue of rural sanitation through the building of toilets in panchayats, blocks and districts.
Ironically, Sakhara’s inhabitants used the 20 government-sponsored toilets built in 2000 as storehouses.
“The government only made outer structures, which fell apart in a few months. There were no seats, no pipes; not even a door,†grumbles Gutmulkuvar. “Neither did they teach us how to use it or educate us about its benefits.â€
In April 2005, with the aid of local UNICEF (United Nations Children’s Fund) representatives, the women SHGs devised a sanitation plan for Sakhara.
Each of the groups pooled in Rs 500 for raw materials to build toilets costing Rs 300 to Rs 1,500.
…The government’s shoddy latrines were rebuilt with cemented bricks, commodes, flush tanks, drainage pipes — and doors. Makeshift toilets were also constructed in homes and the local primary school.
Once the toilets were ready, the most challenging part for the women was to convince the shy villagers to use them.
“They thought it was unhygienic to defecate and urinate within their own houses,†says Gonivar.
Through gram panchayat meetings, the women helped locals understand the advantages of lavatories. “It was strange at first,†…But it soon caught on.
…The women know they have earned this praise. “Our village is good, but we have worked hard to make it so,†says Gonivar.
*** Excerpts End ***
But a lot still needs to be done.
To round off this series, pl. read this concluding paragraph from Tavleen Singh’s recent article, ‘Gandhian’ field trips:
Instead of the tokenism of renaming the NREGA in his name, what about a campaign to create sanitary living conditions in our villages in Gandhiji’s name? He was one of the few Indian leaders who was appalled by the squalour of rural Indian life and wrote about it eloquently.
There is much that can be done in Gandhiji’s name that would truly honour his memory. But, for that we need to get beyond the empty symbolism of sleepovers in Dalit huts. It mocks the misery of the poorest of our citizens to do this. They do not live in squalour because they like to, but because they have no choice.
Their squalid living conditions, their shameful poverty, bear witness to how little has changed for the Dalits since Gandhiji first began his fight against untouchability. What is sadder still is that Dalit leaders like Mayawati so quickly forget where they came from.
Related Posts:
On Open Defecation, Hygiene and India Shining – Part I
“A plea for sanitation†– excerpts and Sujalam, Suphalam*…and yet…
iNDIAN RAILWAY is world’s second largest in length, but is the worlds longest open toilet. What do you think?
Depressing.
From No toilets costs India $54 billion annually – World Bank:
Excerpts from India tops in open defecation, May 9, 2014, By PTI:
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“Globally, India continues to be the country with the highest number of people (597 million people) practising open defecation,†says the report — the Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation — 2014 update — released in Geneva on Friday.
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“High GDP growth is all very well but this is most basic fundamental, related to the security and dignity of women.
Also we have failed to recognise that poor sanitation is one of the main causes of persistent malnutrition,†he (Jairam Ramesh) told PTI.
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According to the UN, countries where open defecation is most widely practised have the highest number of deaths of children under the age of five, as well as high levels of under-nutrition, high levels of poverty and large disparities between the rich and poor.
There are also strong gender impacts: lack of safe, private toilets makes women and girls vulnerable to violence and is an impediment to girls’ education, it says.
From Badaun gangrape: Why the Badaun girls didn’t have a toilet they could call their own, Pritha Chatterjee | Katra Sadatganj (badaun) | June 3, 2014
…Katra Sadatganj village where two cousins went out to relieve themselves at night and were found raped and hanging from a tree 10 hours later has 3,500 families. Of them, 173 have toilets. Of these, 73 exist only on paper.
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According to figures available with the chief development officer (CDO) of Badaun district, the last 10 toilets were constructed in Katra Sadatganj under the Indira Awaas Yojana in 2010. It was in 2002 that the last survey was conducted to identify BPL families eligible for it. Under the scheme, families got Rs 36,000 to build a house and toilet. While the amount has since been hiked to Rs 75,000, the villagers in Katra Sadatganj were covered by the previous allocation.
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The families of the two cousins who were found dead own 10 bighas of land together and were not identified as BPL beneficiaries, though they say they have applied several times for BPL cards. “There is obviously a need to conduct fresh surveys,†a senior official says.
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Those who were found eligible for monetary benefits in the 2002 survey say the construction of a single-room house and toilet began only in 2007. Village pradhan Kamal Kant Sharma points out that of the finished toilets, at least 50 were just holes dug into the ground and covered with a tin sheet. “In less than a year, the holes filled up and there was nobody to help villagers clean them. At least 50 of these toilets are non-functional,†Sharma says.
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A 14-year-old cousin of the two deceased girls — the third minor girl of the household — said, “Our school has a toilet, so during school days, the three of us would go there. But now the school is shut so everyone has to go out to the fields in the evening.â€
She has no doubt why she was spared the fate of her cousins. “I had my menstrual cycle, so that night I stayed back. I feel too embarrassed to go out in such a condition. That saved my life.â€
Excerpts from Build toilets in the mind first by Bhupesh Bhandari, New Delhi Aug 28, 2014:
…According to the 2011 census, 67 per cent of rural households and 13 per cent of urban households defecate in the open. As much as 60 per cent of the entire open defecation in the world happens in India. In all global maps that depict the unhygienic practice, the reddest zone is India.
The Water and Sanitation Program of the World Bank had estimated that inadequate sanitation cost India $53.8 billion in 2006 – 6.4 per cent of the country’s gross domestic product in that year. Open defecation breeds various illnesses, which cause a loss of output. Also, people often have to walk some distance before they reach a defecation site. This, too, impacts output. The health problems created by open defecation are known to create stunted children, and this affects productivity when they join the workforce. Parents don’t send girls to schools because they don’t have toilets. For women, open defecation causes loss of dignity. It also deprives the country of serious earnings from tourism. These are strong economic and social reasons to end the practice. Health benefits kick in, experts say, when 30 per cent of the community starts to use toilets. At 70 per cent usage, half of the benefits are reached.
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Some might say that there is some correlation between water availability and open defecation. Theoretically, it would seem so. …But research carried out by the World Bank shows there is no correlation between water availability and open defecation. In fact, women, followed by infirm people, are the biggest champions of toilets inside homes. There is only one block (sub-district) in the country that is totally free of open defecation – in the water-scarce Churu district of Rajasthan.
Even in the remotest corner of the country, everything required to set up a toilet is available within a radius of 20 kilometres; yet there is widespread reluctance to install a toilet at home. One reason is monetary. For example, the per capita income of Bihar is Rs 25,000 a year. For a family of five, that means income of Rs 1.25 lakh. For it to spend Rs 25,000 on a toilet is a tough choice. To help such families, Rural Development Minister Nitin Gadkari has proposed to raise the money allocated for a toilet from Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. But like all subsidies, only a fraction of the toilet subsidy reaches the intended beneficiaries. That is why researchers say the improvement in the sanitation standards of the lowest quintiles of population has been marginal.
The biggest deterrent to toilets is actually the Indian mindset. Recent work by Research Institute for Compassionate Economics in five states (Bihar, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh) found that over 40 per cent of the households with a functional toilet have at least one member who defecates in the open. These people find open defecation more pleasurable and desirable. In other words, even if the government were to fit every home with a toilet, the problem is unlikely to vanish. There is ample evidence to suggest that toilets built with government help are often used as store rooms or even cowsheds. The Punjab government had launched a programme to build community toilets in the state, but these quickly fell into disuse.
That is why it is necessary to instill some sort of behavioural change amongst people.
…While the money is important, people first need to build toilets in the mind.
It is also surprising that though it is such a problem, there has been very little work on toilets, especially in developing low-cost ones. Though Kolkata in 1870 became the third city in the world after London (1850) and New York (1860) to get a sewer system to dispose of human waste, the country’s sewer system is far from adequate. Less than 15 per cent of Indian cities have sewerage. Less than a fifth of these have sewer-treatment plants. ..
Placing this link and some excerpts here for the record:
Hindu texts not to blame for India’s sanitation crisis:
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There is no denying that India is struggling with the practice of open defecation but the reason for that does not lie in Hindu texts. In fact the solution for the crisis lies in those very texts.
What the ancient Vedas, Manusmriti, Kamasutra (yes, the Kamasutra is not merely about sex) highlight is that distance should be maintained between faeces and human habitation. Distance.
In other words, no mixing, no contact between human wastes and the places where people live, eat and sleep.
Also, it is specifically mentioned that faeces and urine should not be allowed to come in contact with water bodies.
Even in agriculture, the use of raw human waste is expressly prohibited. It has to be borne in mind that this was centuries before the germ theory of disease was formulated in Europe. Which means, long before Europeans realised that diseases could be transmitted by pathogens from feces, Hindu texts had precluded this from happening.
In the distant past, when populations were low, people would walk long distances away from homes, away from rivers or wells, defecate into pits, cover them with soil and leave them to get absorbed into soil. They would wash their hands thoroughly with cleaning agents which were naturally available.
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The problem arose when populations grew. There were fewer “far-off†places to defecate because where the boundaries of one village ended, another started. One might be defecating far away from one’s home but that place could be close to another’s home or water source!
Knowledge about covering up the faeces properly was not transmitted correctly. Poverty made it harder for families to pay much attention to hygiene. Things were not helped when the British took over and destroyed old patterns of living.
Under British rule, the maintenance of reservoirs and rainwater harvesting structures was perceived as an unnecessary expense and discontinued. Gradually, water tanks fell into disuse. As people migrated to cities in search of education and jobs, indigenous knowledge of water management and sanitation disappeared completely.
Meanwhile, the flush toilet arrived in cities from Europe and this became the cause of even more pollution for the simple reason that its design principle was based on pollution. It envisaged the mixing of clean water with faeces and disposing it somewhere (usually rivers or lakes).
The hallowed Hindu principle of not mixing waste with clean water was discarded and this let loose a plethora of diseases. Had those principles been researched and developed scientifically into a code of best practices, today India could have been full of eco-friendly toilets that produced excellent fertiliser (perhaps bio-energy too) while its rivers, lakes and wells could have been the cleanest in the world. There would have been no need for the country to import fertilisers at nearly $700 per tonne.
Instead, flush toilets became popular everywhere and the water (sewage) carrying away the waste from homes was dumped into rivers and lakes. Once sewage is generated, there is a need for sewage treatment plants with a whole range of processes to separate the water from the wastes.
Think about it: mixing clean water with faeces just to transport it and then using a whole lot of energy, chemicals and money to separate solids from water. Does this sound intelligent? It takes just one particle of waste to contaminate hundreds of litres of water. And yet, this practice has become the cornerstone of modern sewage treatment.
The Hindus who wrote the ancient texts were not idiots. Far from it, they need to be commended for their wisdom. Any sanitation professional will admit that flush toilets are big mistakes but there is no choice. It is hard to uproot hardware that has been installed everywhere. So the thinking today is – the system might be wrong but let us make it work as efficiently as we can.
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The disinformation campaign about the nexus between Hinduism and poor hygiene needs to be busted. Verse after verse in Hindu scriptures expound on the link between cleanliness and godliness.
What the country needs to do today is to reclaim the knowledge in ancient Hindu texts which taught humans to take care of their environment, and to keep dirt and waste away from water bodies. Indians need to make up for lost time and build toilets that do not send human wastes to water.