Nothing to loos but your chains

By From The World In 2014, Print,    www.economist.com   November 18th, 2013

Of the many splendid galleries and historical sites in Delhi, India’s capital, none quite compares to the eccentric brilliance of the International Toilet Museum. In 2014 it marks 20 years since its official opening. In November it will play host to a global conference on toilets and sanitation. It is worth a tour. Ideally your guide should be Bindeshwar Pathak, a genial 70-year-old toilet enthusiast, who describes himself as “a missionary of sanitation” and heads Sulabh International, a large NGO that also runs the site. Assorted contraptions on display could make your head spin: solar-powered solid-waste incinerators; waterless flushers; cooking stoves powered by biogas; human-sized statues made of plastic-coated excreta.

Most striking of the lot, however, is a photograph of a Harappan water closet. A modern-looking toilet, with piped water, it was found in the nearby Indus Valley. The civilisation that built it existed 4,500 years ago. Every Indian policymaker should get a copy of the picture: the world’s first toilet. For even as the country trumpets planned space missions, it fails to build good loos today. By 2015 India had pledged, as a Millennium Development Goal, to get half its people proper sanitation. Short of a miracle in the coming year, it will fail. “We are trying to go to Mars, yet we have no money for public health,” complains Mr. Pathak.

It sounds unkind to say it, but India has an immense problem with bad hygiene. The 2011 census noted that 4,861 towns and cities lack even a partial sewerage network (forget about villages). Half of Indians are obliged to defecate in the open. As a result, polluted water spreads illnesses such as encephalitis and diarrhoea. Around 150,000 children will die from diarrhoea in India in 2014. Wretched sanitation is a big reason why so many Indians, despite sufficient calories, are stunted and wasted from malnutrition.

Official schemes to support lavatories do some good. If you plan to build one, a subsidy of around 9,900 rupees ($160) exists. But corruption and inefficiency mean the money is hard to get. Worse, there is little prospect of proper town planning and citywide sewerage, let alone enough treatment plants. So India’s sacred rivers will become an even bigger threat to public health.

 

In 2014 the Gates Foundation undertook to unveil a range of “waterless toilets” for India’s cities. Rising aspirations of Indian consumers may speed up progress too. The press occasionally runs stories of women refusing to wed unless their fiancés first provide a toilet in their home. Politicians scent an opportunity: