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Opinion

Toilet bowl of agendas

To defecate, she must wait to cover herself with darkness. The predicament, more pronounced in what is vaguely defined as ‘rural India’, has prompted rural development, water and sanitation minister Jairam Ramesh to tell the women of Khajuri village near Kota, ‘Don’t get married in a house where there is no toilet.’

While the advice is timely, considering the fact that rural sanitation is a key issue in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government’s toilet bowl of agendas for the 2014 elections, little has been done to reduce the vulnerability of women who must go out in the fields before dawn to relieve themselves.

In an essay titled, Sanitation in the Time of Floods, Teresa Rehman describes the horror of Salma Begum, a widow with two daughters, who lives on the banks of the Jia Bhoroli river in Assam’s Sonitpur district. The floods, which arrive promptly and stay for three months every year, make defecation especially troublesome. A makeshift raft ferries the women across the swollen river, in search of a dry spot for their ablutions. Salma is haunted with memories of a leech that clung to her buttocks – she discovered only when she saw that her sari stained with blood.

The essay goes on to recount the suffering of the elderly. Salma’s aged mother was afflicted with diarrhoea during one spate of flooding and needed to defecate frequently. She relieved herself in a polythene bag that had to be emptied in the floodwater itself, as it was impossible to carry the old lady in the raft.

Jamila Khatun, who also belongs to the same district as Salma Begum, tells of her desperation in the essay: ‘Sometimes we have to seek permission from the owners of a dry patch in order to defecate. Most often we have to do it discreetly, on other people’s land, as it becomes difficult to control oneself. Sometimes, during the floods, we starve ourselves so that we do not need to defecate.’

While regions prone to flooding have a unique set of tribulations, dry areas too, with their absence of toilets, are problematic for women. Since they have no place to go during the day and must wait till it is dark, they become more susceptible to urinary and reproductive tract infections. For menstruating and pregnant women, the trudge to the open toilet is fraught with embarrassment and the danger of a miscarriage. Relieving themselves in fields also makes them easy targets for harassment.

There are other fallouts of apathy to basic sanitation for women.  According to the 2009 Annual Status of Education Report (ASER), a survey of government and private schools in 575 out of 583 districts in India, only 50 per cent of government schools have toilets, and four out of every 10 government schools do not have separate toilets for girls.  Adolescent girls sometimes abandon their education midway for lack of proper toilets.

The first phase of Census 2011 – houselisting and housing – reveals that only 46.9 per cent of India’s 24.66 crore households have a latrine facility. In Jharkhand, 77 per cent of households have no toilet facilities, followed by 76.6 per cent in Odisha and 75.8 per cent in Bihar. An abysmal list of numbers that is a portrait of a nation caught squatting in filth, stripped off dignity, racked with bouts of diarrhoea. This, despite optimistic spurts of initiative – like the Mantra project (Movement and Action Network for Transformation of Rural Lives) – that promises rural Indian communities with toilets and running water in every house. The project, conceived by the NGO Gram Vikas, has received the first Global+5 award, instituted by the Geneva-based Global Journal, for honouring ‘solutions to the most pressing global questions of the next five years.’ Based in Odisha, Gram Vikas endeavours to provide ‘blanket coverage’ of toilets and piped running water to communities that have fallen out of the life-affirming purview of both. The group claims to have reached 988 villages, including those in hilly areas. The NGO believes that without such help, ‘rural communities remain more prone to waterborne diseases and as a result are demoralised and unable to defeat the cycle of poverty.’

Yet another dreamy-eyed project for sustainable rural sanitation, developed by the students of National Institute of Design, has won the first prize at UX-India’s iInnovate Award 2012. The students proposed an incentive of Rs 1 for every villager who chose to use the toilet, and prompted those who did to put ash and dry leaves in the facility. The students suggested collection of the waste and turning it into compost at a location outside the village. The compost could then be used by the farmer as fertiliser.

While government officials bombard each other with sludge – Jairam Ramesh claims that state governments ‘fudge’ data on building toilets – it is impassioned thought and youthful fervour that will stoke a need for change. For Salma Begum, and those like her, this means a facility to relieve herself without falling prey to voyeuristic eyes, disease, wild animals and more importantly, policies that are noting but flatulence.

Radhika Oberoi is an advertising professional and freelance writer.
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