Off Beat! (01): Is India drowning in its own

By John B. Monteiro
Bellevision Media Network

• If You Can’t Find The Toilet, Smell It Out.- Marco.

Below is the background to the tenth of the ten quotes on toilets by Marco in his The Ultimate Toilet Blog.

18 June 2012: I was in Hong Kong last year. I was searching for a public toilet that was on the map. However, when I went there, I was unable to see the toilet. There seemed to be no toilets there. I knew the toilet was there somehow, because the Food & Environment Department listed it on its website. Due to the lack of time, I panicked. After a while, I had an idea. I started to smell the toilet out.

 

Later on, I discovered that I was standing above the toilet all the while. The toilet was below where I was standing. I was actually standing on a hilly road.

 

So if you can’t find it, smell it out.

 

Marco had one experience of having to find a toilet by its smell. In India the whole country is smelling like a toilet because al-fresco toilets are India’s trade mark. India is the number one country where open defecation is practiced. But, first the facts, as reported on the basis of reports by international agencies, by R. Prasad in The Hindu (14-6-12).

 

Sixty per cent of people living in India do not have access to toilets, and hence are forced to defecate in the open. In actual numbers, sixty per cent translates to 626 million. This makes India the number one country in the world where open defecation is practised. Indonesia with 63 million is a far second!

 

At 949 million in 2010 worldwide, vast majority of people practising open defecation live in rural areas. Though the number of rural people practising open defecation has reduced by 234 million in 2010 than in 1990, “those that continue to do so tend to be concentrated in a few countries, including India,” notes the 2012 update report of UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO).  For instance, of the 2.4 lakh gram panchayats in the country, only a mere 24,000 are completely free of open defecation. More than half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation live in India or China. The high figure prevails even as four out of 10 people who have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990 live in these two countries.

 

“Rapidly-modernising India is drowning in its own excreta,” notes the New Delhi-based Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment in a Comment piece published today (June 14) in Nature.  The only silver lining is the determination with which Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh intends to rid the country of open defecation within a decade. His endeavour got a shot in the arm recently when the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs increased the amount of money to be spent for household toilets in rural areas from Rs.4,600 to Rs.10,000.

 

But increased spending alone will in no way turn out to be a magic bullet in solving the malaise of open defecation. Numerous examples from other countries serve as testimony to this. Bringing about a change in mindset is the paramount need. Awareness of the link between open defection and diseases like diarrhoea will in one way change the way people defecate. After all, almost 10 per cent of all communicable diseases are linked to unsafe water and poor sanitation. According to WHO, open defecation is the “riskiest sanitation practice of all.”

 

While ridding open defecation will go a long way in improving sanitation and reducing disease outbreaks, Sunita Narain makes a strong case for larger investments in sewage systems and effective use of water. The need for newer technologies cannot be ignored. Current technologies use “large amounts of water to transport small amounts of excreta through expensive pipes to costly treatment plants, she states. This is “unworkable and unaffordable,” especially considering the fact that cities are growing at a rapid pace and infrastructure is always lagging behind.

 

It is notable that Bill Gates has committed millions of dollars to invent toilets that do not need water and he is determined to see the end of this quest. In the Bible there are references to people making a hole in the sand and covering it up after the job is done. In our times, the cats are doing this. We Indians seem to be far behind the biblical times and even cats! This reminds us of what Mahatma Gandhi said during the freedom struggle: If all Indians spat in unison, the colonising British could be drowned in the spit.

 

We are on a perverse path to drown ourselves in our own excreta.Chew on this!

 

John B. Monteiro, author and journalist, is editor of his website www.welcometoreason.com (Interactive Cerebral Challenger) with instant response format. Try responding!