By Huned Contractor

Pradip Saha's Faecal Attraction follows water from the toilet to the Ganga-Yamuna, throwing up several disturbing thoughts about the disposal of human waste along the way

Two men by the roadside, defecating, banter about the act itself and the hygiene associated with toilet activities. We don’t see them because the 32-minute documentary Faecal Attraction, by Pradip Saha, opens onto a dark screen. But this, if anything, serves as a sign of what is to come. Although answering nature’s call is an unavoidable part of our everyday lives, precious little thought is given to how best to dispose of the waste. Despite all our technological advances, in this one aspect we remain completely in the dark.

To drive home the point, Saha cuts from this slightly embarrassing situation to a posh toilet with expensive fittings and the ambient noise of a hundred flushes. This leads to the Yamuna river in Delhi, reduced to a mere gutter thanks to the millions of gallons of filth that are poured into it.

With images of pilgrims on river banks, and the sound of chants, the film points to the fact that water is worshipped all across the country. Yet it is just as easily abused, whether in Varanasi, where sewage accounts for 95% of the pollution in the Ganga, or Kanpur where the river is no more than a drain. Saha follows the flow of water from the moment a toilet is flushed, using 10-12 litres of water, down through the drains and into a Sewage Treatment Plant (STP).

To highlight how prohibitively expensive it is to get rid of human waste, Saha reveals that each of Delhi’s 17 STPs spends between Rs 5 and Rs 10 lakh to treat 1 million gallons of sewage. Totally, they receive around 375 million gallons a day.

Still, 45% of the city remains unconnected to a sewage system, and the sewage untreated.

The expense is partly because STPs have been built far from the source of the sewage, which has to be pumped through pipelines over long distances. Here again, inefficiency and corruption in the bureaucracy has resulted in miles and miles of pipes being bought but not installed.

STPs also consume huge amounts of electricity. The government knows this but has done nothing to study the situation or call for alternative sources of energy such as solar power.

Why has sewage been afforded such step-motherly treatment? Because society suffers from a ‘flush-and-forget’ syndrome, says Saha. Most of the people he interviews in the film are unaware of what happens after they have flushed down their waste, and are completely unconcerned about the environmental impact. This is borne out by the fact that hardly anyone knows that the huge sum of Rs 2,400 crore has been poured into cleaning up the Yamuna river, as part of the Yamuna Action Plan.

Whether it is Delhi, Pune or any other city, slum-dwellers are conveniently blamed for polluting river water. They are also the ones who have to pay the price for ill-conceived sewage disposal and treatment systems. This is precisely what happened in the Yamuna-Pushta belt, from where thousands of families have been evicted despite the fact that the bulk of the sewage flowing into the river is from colonies -- regular, authorised buildings -- that are connected to sewage pipelines.

Saha also focuses on the miserable conditions in which drains are cleaned so that upmarket localities do not have to face sewage blockage problems. The people who clean the drains wear little or no protective clothing and work with nothing more than a spade. They move around barefoot in the slush, and are often exposed to poisonous gases that take a toll on their health. But no one, it seems, is in the least bit disturbed by this state of affairs.

The good thing about Saha’s film is that it uses black humour to convey the message rather than present it in a stark academic manner. Here’s one example: We are inside a sanitaryware showroom where a salesperson introduces us to a ‘three- and six-litre dual-flush system’, a western commode imported from Switzerland, another from Italy, from England and from France. One costs Rs 86,000 and another Rs 98,000 “excluding the tap”. A gushing stream of water turns into a small gurgle and then into an excruciatingly slow drip. Meanwhile, elsewhere, the chaos around a water tanker is already turning into a full-fledged battle. Not in a slum, but in a middle-class colony.

While Faecal Attraction points out the problems of sewage disposal, Saha’s other film Clean Up Your Act -- A Guide To Sewage Treatment is packed with information about the components of sewage and alternative models of non-centralised systems. Improved septic tanks are a good idea where there are no sewage lines. Saha shows how, in several places across the country, communities and institutions have taken advantage of natural microbial processes such as aerobic and anaerobic decomposition. Cleaned partially through such systems, the water flows out into open ponds, gardens and fields.

Such natural and economic methods of treatment are being used by a colony in Pune, a temple in Ujjain, a hospital in Puducherry, and a five-star hotel in Agra, to name a few. If some can do it, why can’t everyone? Saha compels us to think about that.

(Huned Contractor is a freelance journalist and filmmaker based in Pune)

InfoChange News & Features, July 2007