HEALTH AND SANITATION
25
HEALTH AND SANITATION
25
"The importance of looking at culture when
choosing what toilets to construct and where,
is clearly illustrated in India’s situation where
poor toilet habits have little to do with income
or limited access to water. "
and lighting,” the organisation explains, but is
also quick to admit that the added cost may
keep a solution using toilets such as this one a
pipe dream. According to their website, last year
they helped nearly 620 000 people access clean
water, sanitation, and waste services.
As they debate the usefulness of their own
single-solution systems, both organisations may
however wish to look to India if they truly want
to understand the depths of the problem they
are facing.
In 2014, India launched the Swachh Bharat
Mission (SBM) with the aim being to totally
eradicate people having to go to the toilet out
in the open. Part of Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s Clean India campaign, the move hopes
to install 60 million new sanitary toilets by the
end of 2019 and encourages the population
to build thousands more through a series of
educational campaigns.
Modi says that the prevalence of open defecation
in India is a shame for a country that has
global aspirations and that the lack of sanitary
conveniences is demeaning to women.
The latest data from the SBM portal suggests
that 27 out of India’s 36 states and Union
territories should now be open defecation free
(ODF) with 98.6% of Indian households having
access to toilets. If true, these numbers would
be a massive success and when it comes to
actually building toilets and potentially giving their
population the option to avoid open defecation,
India has shown huge gains. Since October
2014, 91.5 million toilets have been constructed
and 154.3 million rural households have now got
access to toilets.
However, a new study released this year
by a team from the Research Institute for
Compassionate Economics (RICE), suggests that
44% of the rural population in Bihar, Madhya
Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan still
defecate in the open. The study found that while
access to toilets has risen sharply over the past
four years with 71% of the rural population in
these states owning a latrine in 2018 compared
with 37% in 2014, incidences of open defecation
seem to suggest many in India are resistant to
actually using their new toilets.
September 2019 Volume 25 I Number 7
It seems that building toilets for populations
that do not have them is the easy part —
getting them to use them is much harder, and
would require a series of massive education
campaigns, and a rethink on exactly what a
rural toilet needs to look like, how it needs to
operate, and what it needs to achieve. Despite
the fact that the government of India spends
millions a year just building toilets, many of
these often fall into disuse. It’s not quite as
simple as just building toilets.
According to NGO Gramalaya, who has been
building toilets in rural India for more than two
decades, toilet design needs to factor in several
different conditions, such as affordability, space
in the home, geographical conditions (soil/water
table and so on), cultural habits, the availability/
scarcity of water, and the presence of skilled or
semi-skilled human resources.
The importance of looking at culture when
choosing what toilets to construct and where,
is clearly illustrated in India’s situation where
poor toilet habits have little to do with income or
limited access to water. They are influenced more
by India’s centuries-old caste system, in which
members of the lowest group, formerly called
‘untouchables’, would clear away human waste.
“The act of emptying the pit latrines that
government is building is associated with the
socially degrading caste system,” said Sangita
Vyas, managing director at RICE. “People fear
a situation when their pit fills up and there is
nobody willing to clean it because of the social
stigma. That fear discourages sustained use
of toilets.”
In short, the task set by the WHO is an enormous
one, and one which is unlikely to find an
answer in a single source. Whether the 2032
goal of universal sanitation can be met will
likely be decided by numerous governments,
organisations, and institutions, and the real goal
for WHO should simply be education.
Sources
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_
pacific/india-is-building-millions-of-toilets-but-
toilet-training-could-be-a-bigger-task PA
www.plumbingafrica.co.za