India tops in open defecation

www.thehindu.com  May 9th, 2014

India still has the largest number of people defecating in open in the world, according to a new UN report prompting the Government to admit it as a “huge shame….Globally, India continues to be the country with the highest number of people (597 million people) practising open defecation,” says the report — the Progress on Drinking Water and Sanitation — 2014 update — released in Geneva on Friday.

The report jointly prepared by the WHO and the UNICEF says that eighty-two per cent of the one billion people are practising open defecation in the world live in just 10 countries. Despite having some of the highest numbers of open defecators, India does not feature among the countries making great strides in reducing open defecation, says the report. The UN findings prompted Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh to term it as “a huge shame for all of us. I have been saying all this for three years now. Sanitation has to become a national obsession. It is a huge shame for all of us,” said Mr. Ramesh, who took several steps to eradicate the menace of open defecation in the country. “High GDP growth is all very well but this is most basic fundamental, related to the security and dignity of women. Also we have failed to recognise that poor sanitation is one of the main causes of persistent malnutrition,” he told PTI.

The report, however, hails India’s immediate neighbour Bangladesh and Vietnam, saying they are among the top 10 countries that have achieved the highest reduction in open defecation since 1990. Vietnam, Bangladesh and Peru have reduced open defecation prevalence to single digits, it says.

According to the UN, countries where open defecation is most widely practised have the highest number of deaths of children under the age of five, as well as high levels of under-nutrition, high levels of poverty and large disparities between the rich and poor. There are also strong gender impacts: lack of safe, private toilets makes women and girls vulnerable to violence and is an impediment to girls’ education, it says.

Take the poo to the Loo: The UNICEF campaign to make our nation a cleaner and sanitised place

By Priya Prakashan @arien_priya  India.com   April 21, 2014 

Enough of Shit! proclaims UNICEF website to the sanitary imperilment.

Public defecation is a serious havoc in India. If the stats are to be believed provided by the campaign, 620 million Indians defecate in the open. That is a staggering amount of people who dump over 65 million kilos of poo. The statistics regarding poop is as ugly as the situation is !

While the stench is spreading threatening diseases and epidemics, all we do is scrunch up our nose and walk away.

The water safety is being compromised by defecating in the open leading to microbial contamination risk.Seven states in India namely Orissa, Meghalaya ,Chhattisgarh ,Jharkhand, Assam, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar account for almost 50% of (13.8 million)children who don’t have access to toilet facilities in schools.

UNICEF has tied up with many partners like NGO Protsahan, toilet cleaner brand Domex and Indian Institute of Technology for the campaign. The campaign is projected across Hyderabad, New Delhi, Mumbai and Pune.

The campaign has a song that might seem silly but is as entertaining as it can get with a complete music video spanning 4:08 minutes. The musical PSA Poo Party which has personified sanitary horror as Mr. Poo manages to spread the awareness with the catchy line “Take the poo to the loo”
The campaign has made its presence on all social media platforms  with Facebook, Youtube , Twitter and a centralized website to make its mark.

The website of the campaign asks to ‘Join the ‘Take Poo to the Loo’ campaign and pledge your support to a poo-free nation by signing a personal pledge that will reach the Hon’ble President of India. Every time you and your friends take the pledge, you signal your intolerance towards an India that accepts open defecation to none other than the President of India.’

We hope this campaign will trigger better toilet facilities and a cleaner and sanitised poo free nation!

India Needs Toilets Before It Can Reinvent Them

By Aditi Malhotra   Mar 25, 2014 

An exhibitor from Loughborough University demonstrates the use of a toilet during Reinvent The Toilet Fair in New Delhi, India, Mar. 21, 2014

Associated Press

About 50 toilets occupied the plush lawns of New Delhi’s Taj Palace hotel over the weekend. What were they doing there?

After the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation put out a call for innovative and affordable toilets, more than 45 models from 15 countries were displayed this weekend at the Toilet Fair. The call was first made in 2011 when the Seattle-based philanthropy fund laid the world’s sanitation crisis out on a table and summoned those who could reinvent the toilet to create safe and affordable sanitation.

At the time, the foundation handed out grants to 16 models presented by universities, nonprofit and private organizations, for next-generation loos.

In October, the foundation brought the challenge to India – a country where more than half the population defecates in the open.

On Saturday, six of the 100-plus proposals, received grants worth $2 million from the Gates Foundation and India’s state-run department of biotechnology. They will use the funding to design models, which will minimize the use of water and dependency on sewage systems – large parts of India lack underground sewage networks and access to piped water. They also hope to convert waste into fertilizer for plants.

For example, the team from U.K.-based Loughborough University, which won a grant in 2011, designed a lavatory that uses half a liter of water and transforms feces into biochar. Creating biochar involves a scientific process called hydrothermal carbonization, which coupled with basic “pressure cooking” converts not just urine or feces, but waste, such as sanitary napkins and discarded food into fertilizer.

March 21, 2014 photo, a sample of biochar at the Reinvent The Toilet Fair in New Delhi, India. 

EricBellmanWSJ and @WSJIndia  Oct 8, 2014

Greater Mumbai - NGO inputs, Public toilets, Cost recovery

Brihan Mumbai Municiple Corporation to seek NGOs’ inputs on spots for public toilets

By Sharvari Patwa, indianexpress.com  January 14th, 2014

The BMC recently began a survey to map all public toilets in the city.

The BMC (Greater Bombay) has planned to invite citizens’ organisations and NGOs to help in identifying locations to construct public toilets in the city.

“We have planned to construct more public toilets and invite NGOs to run these public toilets based on the requirements put forth by citizens’ groups,” said a senior civic official from the solid waste management department.

The BMC recently began an extensive survey to map all public toilets in the city. The civic body will also survey properties of other public agencies such as the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA), Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and Public Works Department (PWD) to account for the public toilets in their areas.

In a city constantly on the move, where an average person travels a considerable distance to and from his workplace, a glaring gap is seen in the most basic public utility — toilets for people on the go.

As per BMC data, as of May 2012, for the 1.3 crore residents of Mumbai, there were only 836 public toilet blocks (excluding public toilets in slums) having a total of 10,381 toilet seats, 2,849 urinals and 842 bathrooms. This means that a single toilet seat caters to 1,250 Mumbaikars even as authorities admit the city needs a minimum of 35,000 public toilet seats. NGOs’ estimates peg the figure at 50,000 seats.

To stop open defecation, civic body collects data on public toilets

archive.indianexpress.com

To Improve sanitation facilities in the city, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation is conducting a survey of spots/areas that require public toilets. Following the state government's directive to eradicate open defecation, the civic body is counting public toilets in the city to assess further requirements.

It has already surveyed 15 wards. "There are about 4,500 toilets in the city according to our preliminary round of survey, out of which 65-70 per cent are for men and the rest are for women," said an official.

"We are taking a count of toilet blocks in the city for both women and men," said B P Patil, Chief Engineer, Solid Waste Management. Based on the data, more toilets will be constructed under the Mumbai Sewage Disposal Project.

"The state government has given a directive to stop open defecation in cities. We are studying and recording areas and places where open defecation takes place and based on the data collected, we will prepare a report of how many toilets are required," said Patil. According to Patil, the data collected will primarily include number of toilets available along the railway stations and railway lines.

"Open defecation is common outside railway stations and along tracks. Slum population living along the tracks and commuters use the open space for unrination," said an official involved in the project.

He added, "While there is a dire need to construct more public toilets in the city, there is no detailed data available on the existing toilets blocks. The survey would include number of pay-and-use toilets around railway stations, their exact locations, ownership of land, which NGO is running it and if there is a need to upgrade the facilities."

The BMC has also started the process of surveying the Eastern and Western Express Highways to find out spots where sanitation facilities are needed the most.

BMC to recover cost from agencies through property tax

archive.indianexpress.com

After offering its services to state and central government land-owning agencies, such as the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), Mumbai Port Trust (MbPT), and the Indian Railways, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) will now forcibly collect garbage from publicly-owned areas.

A circular from the civic body's solid waste management department states that the cost for garbage collection from public land will be recovered by raising the property tax for state and central government land-owning agencies.

"We had given these public and private land owners the option of using our services based on a basic fee structure. However, except for MMRDA, no one approached us. They said it is the BMC's duty to collect garbage from their properties," said a senior civic official.

"Uncollected garbage is causing a problem to citizens. We are now going to enforce collection and increase the agencies' property tax as payment. We are issuing a circular to them in this regard," he added.

Till April, the BMC collected garbage only from public roads and door-to-door points. It was not responsible for garbage on land owned by agencies such as MbPT, MMRDA, MHADA and railway lines. At a civic standing committee meeting last November, Additional Municipal Commissioner Mohan Adtani proposed to offer the civic garbage collection services at a basic fee.

The proposal was formalised when Municipal Commissioner Sitaram Kunte, in his budget proposal for the current fiscal year, set aside over Rs 2 crore for the purpose. This was "to achieve the service level benchmark of 100 per cent for household collection" in BMC's cleanliness programme for the city.

The commissioner also said a proposal was being sought to amend Section 365 (A) of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act of 1886 (which pertains to cleaning all streets of the city), so that service costs can be recovered in lieu of clearing areas.

Open defecation (Sequal to shameful neglect)

By Shameful, www.thehindu.com   December 7th, 2013

This refers to the editorial “Shameful neglect” (Dec. 7), highlighting the real and enormous consequences of open defecation in India. The challenge is indeed profound, so we worry that your diagnosis that “in the absence of toilets, more than 620 million people, or over half of India’s population, are forced to practise open defecation” underestimates its complexity. In our ongoing field research across rural north India into sanitation practices in India, we have observed that: although some families are indeed too poor to construct a pucca latrine, people in rural India are also unlikely to make simple but safe and inexpensive toilets — unlike, for example in Bangladesh, where even very poor people manage to make a latrine of some sort. Additionally, many relatively prosperous families have not constructed a toilet, even though they could certainly afford one. Finally, even in many rural households that do own a working latrine, many people continue to defecate in the open.

In many households, only children, the old, and the weak or sick, for whom it is difficult to walk far from the house, use latrines. Others use them to protect the modesty of young women or for the convenience of people who have to get ready quickly in the morning for a job outside the village. However, people who are young and healthy often report preferring to go in the fields or the jungle — in part because of the widespread belief that open defecation is good for health, and that using a latrine is unpleasant or disgusting.

The complexity of sanitation beliefs and practices is easy to overlook, especially when census and survey data only count latrines owned by households, not the behaviour of individuals. But mistaking a problem that is partially about access and affordability for a problem that is only about access and affordability — and thereby overlooking the challenges of changing ideas and changing behaviours — will not eliminate the deadly and enduring consequences of this practice. (Diane Coffey, Aashish Gupta, Nidhi Khurana, Angshuman Phukan, Dean Spears, Nikhil Srivastav, Sangita Vyas, Research Institute for Compassionate Economics)

Shameful neglect

By T-, www.thehindu.com   December 6th, 2013

If the central message of the need for more toilets to stop open defecation in India got lost in the “more toilets than temples” controversy in 2013, the joint estimate for the year 2011 by the World Health Organization and UNICEF of the number of people who defecate in the open is yet another reminder of why India has to address this issue on a war-footing. In the absence of toilets, more than 620 million people, or over half of India’s population, are forced to practise open defecation. This is yet another development index where India’s extremely poor performance has ‘helped’ it retain the dubious distinction of having the most people in the world defecating in the open. That the State of Bihar alone has a higher rate than any other country in the world to continue this practice speaks volumes of how much the country lags behind. While the government’s mission to rid the country of this practice by 2022 and 50 per cent of all gram panchayats by 2017 is laudable, it is an ambitious goal. For instance, if nearly 74 per cent did not have access to toilets in 1990, the figure declined to only about 50 per cent in 2011. 

Besides other countries, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Nepal have achieved the most improvement during 1990-2011. By reducing it from 32 per cent to 4 per cent during 1990-2011, Bangladesh has fared extremely well. The reduction has been about 50 per cent in the case of Nepal (84 to 43 per cent) and Pakistan (52 to 23 per cent) during the same period. But the rate of decline may accelerate in the years to come with the government increasing last year the amount to be spent for household toilets in rural areas from Rs.4,600 to Rs.10,000.

Financial incentives alone cannot end or drastically reduce the percentage of people continuing with this practice. If other countries have achieved it, there is no reason why India cannot do it. The need to aggressively address the issue cannot be overemphasized as open defecation affects children, especially those below five, the most. This practice causes diarrhoea, one of the most common communicable diseases in India and a number one killer of young children. Frequent diarrhoeal events result in under-nutrition. That explains why nearly 50 per cent of under-five children in rural areas are stunted, wasted, and underweight. Children weakened by this disease are in turn more prone to opportunistic infections such as pneumonia. Now, a World Bank report released recently goes beyond the well-known physical impact. It found a link between open defecation and reduced cognitive achievements