Sulabh International gifts 108 toilets in memory of Badaun victims

In the month of May 2014, two young sisters from Katra Sahadatgunj village of Badaun district of India's Uttar Pradesh state had gone out at night to attend the call of nature. They however never returned back. Their dead bodies were found next morning hanging from a nearby tree. The gruesome murder of these two young girls was something that suddenly made India acutely aware of one of the most basic and fundamental problems faced by the country, that the absence of a toilet in a house was one of the principal reasons for incidents of rapes and sexual assaults in villages. According to UN figures, out of India’s 1.2 billion population, only 665 million have access to toilets. In fact it is quite ironical that a UN study in 2010 finds that more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet. This study says that lack of toilets and proper sanitation costs India nearly $54 billion a year through hygiene-related illnesses, lost productivity and other factors.

In most of the states of India, the situation continues to be absolutely grim and disastrous. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, almost 10 % of the population is an easy pray for deadly diseases because of lack of individual and personal hygiene. Out of total 0.6 Million villages of India, only 25000 villages have toilets available for all the village dwellers. Non maintenance of personal hygiene is the primary reason for the unhealthiness of the society of India at large. About 0.4 Million Indians suffer from Diarrhea every year. Out of which almost 90% are small children. India gets an hit of 2.4 Trillion Rupees, which is 6.4 % of the GDP, because of this personal unhealthiness. Indian Government spends 100 Billion Rupees on Rural development. Out of this only 2 Billion Rupees are spent of programmes connected with personal Hygeine and Toilets. Just because there are no toilets available within their premises, many Indian womenfolk from villages are forced to to go out in groups to defecate in open spaces in darkness before the dawn breaks. These women find this a very shameful act, which they have to perform every morning. This lack of freedom even to carry out normal needs of a human body makes big impact on psychology of these village womenfolk.

The gruesome incident in Katra Sahadatgunj village even made the prime minister, Narendra Modi, to raise the issue during his Independence Day speech in August 2014, when he said that India should strive to ensure every household had a toilet within the next four years. He asked;

“We are in the 21st century and yet there is still no dignity for women as they have to go out in the open to defecate. Can you imagine the number of problems they have to face because of this?”

A low-cost sanitation NGO from India that specializes in building low cost toilets; Sulabh International, decided to adopt this village in June 2014 in memory of the two girls. They conducted a survey and found that nearly 400 families in the village do not have proper toilets and decided to launch a campaign “toilet for every house.” Now, after just two months, Sulabh has dedicated 108 toilets decorated with marigolds and ribbons to the village, which has a population of 4,000 people, so no one has to wait for darkness to fall to attend the call of nature in the open.

In the grim scenario, there is reason for some hope. Women from the Indian state of Haryana , now seem to have taken a new lead. With rural womenfolk, giving their support to the cause, the movement appears to have caught the fascination of the village women in the state. If you ask a rural young girl in Haryana state today, about her expectations of her future bride groom, along with such usual expectations, such as being vegetarian, no vices, capable of getting a good job, a new expectation is likely to be expressed. Most of the girls would say that the future groom must have a latrine in his house. Two years back, Government of Haryana with the help of few NGO’s, started a new movement under the slogan, “No Toilets, No bride”. This movement has caught the fascination of rural womenfolk and is growing rapidly.

Sulabh International has developed a toilet suitable for villages. What is needed is a massive public relations effort to make the village folk see the light at the end of the tunnel, which not only would improve the personal health but will also protect the young girls.

3^rd September 2014

Freedom from cooking

When I was a school-going lad, I used to spend a part of my summer holidays in Mumbai with my mother’s relatives. Their family was rather a large one consisting of three brothers, wives, kids and the aging parents. What I distinctly remember from these visits is the enormous work, the womenfolk of this family used to do in the house from daybreak until late night. No doubt, theirs was a very large family. With so many mouths to feed, my great grand mother along with her daughters in law used to cook almost throughout the day. In those days, I did not feel anything odd about it, but today I honestly feel that it was a colossal waste of those intelligent womenfolk, who were capable of doing much more intelligent and superior types of assignments.

People in the west, realized this long time ago. Perhaps the world wars during thirties and forties brought up the point very clearly for them. A large percentage of male population was involved in the wars. For doing day-to-day jobs, the only choice that was left was to employ womenfolk of the country. The women did rise to the occasion and there was no stopping after that. In these societies, you would find that women do almost all the jobs shoulder to shoulder with men. This was real emancipation of women.

During eighteenth century, the condition of women in India was worst than those of slaves. Some great social reformers like Dr. Dhondo Keshav Karve, realized this and because of their pioneering work, the conditions for women, improved dramatically. To-day, there is equality of education, legal rights for both the sexes. Women can find jobs worthy of their intellect and capacity.

Let us consider a case of a modern urban nuclear family. Here husband as well as wife are both well qualified. Both of them are also equally well employed. In short, theirs is a DIWK (Double income with kids) family. They have super income, all the comforts of modern life. They can go on holidays. Nevertheless, if you look at the individual workload, the wife, besides fulfilling her responsibility at the job, also has to look after kids and the kitchen. She is expected to provide food for the family whatever may be her involvement level in her job. Modern Indian cities have no facilities, which can really help her here. The good eating-places or restaurants are prohibitively expensive and mostly serve oily Punjabi food. The wife cannot even think of this as a daily alternative to cooking at home. The cheaper places are dirty and food is mostly cooked with suspect raw materials and is unhealthy.

Perhaps, the Singapore experience may be of relevance here. In this city, almost every major cluster of residential buildings, commercial buildings or entertainment enclaves have large eating areas, popularly known as food courts. These places are fairly large sized halls with food vending stalls around the perimeter. The choice of food is just staggering. Chinese, Thai, Indonesian, Korean, Japanese and Indian food to some extent is available. The food is fresh, hot and very reasonably priced. The food is displayed in a very attractive fashion and one can stroll along and make a choice of the menu. The quality of food and the raw materials are top class. All these food courts are self-service areas with low overheads. Government machinery ensures that health standards and quality of food is maintained.

It is no wonder that with this kind of facility available, most Singaporean families do not cook at home. While returning from work, the husband or wife picks up the food for the entire family and comes home. Immediately on reaching home, the families eats fresh, hot food of wide choice and then throw away the food containers. There is no cooking or cleaning the utensils. The singles may prefer to eat in the food courts, where comfortable seating arrangements are provided. With elimination of a major household chore, the husband and wife both can concentrate in a better fashion on their work or looking after kids.

For the people working in these food courts, it is a job and a profession, which earns them a living.

Just try to fit this scenario in the Indian context. Can you imagine the freedom womenfolk would have in India? Indian women are extremely hard working and intelligent. To keep them busy, day after day, in a monotonous job of cooking is a colossal waste of work force.

This would be the real freedom for women of India. The freedom from cooking.

Ignominious disgrace

On every morning, I go for a brisk walk in a park situated not very far from my house. This park has a peculiar kind of shape. The total length of the park must be between 2 or 3 KM. But the width, which is very narrow, varies between just 50 or 60 meters. In this narrow width, a bicycle track has been accommodated on one side. In the remaining width-wise space, there is a jogging track at the center, with mostly small trees planted on one side and large trees occupy the space on the other side. The spaces between trees are filled with small shrubs and greens. For my brisk walks, this park is ideal, because I can start walking from one end, go to the other end and return back. This way, I can easily cover a distance of about 4 or 5 KM.

The other day, as usual, I was returning from my walk. The time must have been around 9 AM. There were still joggers running on the central track along with some seniors leisurely completing their morning stroll. I could also see some school or college going kids with their trademark backpacks on their backs. While walking at a brisk pace, my attention was momentarily drawn to a side. What I saw there was totally shocking and unbelievable. It shattered all my concepts of public behaviour and civic sense. I felt so ashamed that automatically my eyes got focused to the track in front of me. I just could not dare to lift my eyes and moved away from that spot as quickly as I could. What I saw in that fleeting moment, was a middle aged woman, relieving herself just on the side of the jogging track in the middle of a park. In this garden, there are public toilets provided on either end, so absence or lack of a suitable toilet, was no reason for this action, for this ignorant and silly woman. It was  just a case of full and total ignominious ignorance of any  civic sense for that stupid woman.

When a person can be so ignorant of the expected normal civilized behaviour, in a city of 4 or 5 Million people and that too at a spot where continuous movement of the people can be seen, I aqm sure that the situation in India's villages must be unimaginably horrible. UNICEFF, which is a part of the United Nations organization, has recently published a report , which says that 58% of the world's population defecates in open, even today. What I find in this report most shameful is the fact that 54% of Indian population or about 640 Million people use open spaces for their daily evacuations. Perhaps, in no other country of the world, such a vast number of people defecate in the open space. After India, Indonesia is the next country, where a large number of people have make use of open space as a lavatory. But, compared to India, their number is small, just 57 Millions. After this, 54 Million Chinese also face this ordeal.

It is however difficult to say whether people are facing this difficulty because of the lack of toilets or prefer to do this because of their ignorance. Even in the case of women, the figures for India are equally disgraceful. In India, 60% of the womenfolk carry out the task in open. From these figures, one can very well imagine the neglect and disregard shown by people in India and women in particular towards their personal hygiene. India's Minister for rural development minister Mr. Jairam Ramesh considers this fact as biggest and largest blot on India, a description any sensible person would agree to. Mr Jairam says that the situation in the states of Haryana, Sikkim, Maharashtra and Kerala is somewhat better, but in rest of the states the situation contuinues to be absolutely disastrous. In the state of Uttar Pradesh, almost 10 % of the population is an easy pray for deadly diseases because of lack of individual and personal hygiene. Out of total 0.6 Million villages of India, only 25000 villages have toilets available for all the village dwellers.

Non maintenance of personal hygiene is the primary reason for the unhealthiness of the society of India at large. About 0.4 Million Indians suffer from Diarrhea every year. Out of which almost 90% are small children. India gets an hit of 2.4 Trillion Rupees, which is 6.4 % of the GDP, because of this personal unhealthiness. Indian Government spends 100 Billion Rupees on Rural development. Out of this only 2 Billion Rupees are spent of programmes connected with personal Hygeine and Toilets. Mr Jairam wants to increase this outlay to at least 10 Billion Rupees. He is quite concerned with the fact that people's awareness can not be increased by just making rules and laws. He has planned a new initiative, which would be called as 'Festival of Cleanliness' and feel that the things can improve only if a social and political mass movement comes up in the Indian society in the field of personal hygiene and cleanliness.

Even though these figures ring warning bells for the nation at large, essentially, lack of personal hygiene makes biggest impact on the life of the unhealthy individual. Just because there are no toilets available within their premises, many Indian womenfolk from villages are forced to to go out in groups to defecate in open spaces in darkness before the dawn breaks. These women find this a very shameful act, which they have to perform every morning. This lack of freedom even to carry out normal needs of a human body makes big impact on psychology of these village womenfolk.

In many towns and villages of India, it appears from the behaviour of the menfolk, that fields, roads or any wall are considered as public urinal places. Womenfolk have no such freedom and are forced to wait even when painful, just to locate a suitable place and time. This must be the biggest national disgrace for India and women in particular

.

When Indians are freed from such disgraceful behaviours, which are principally caused by the lack of suitable toilet facilities, we can say that there really has been some progress. Today, every other Indian has a mobile phone but has to defecate in open because of the lack of toilets. Under no frame of reference, this situation can be considered as honourable.