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55% of Indians, or 600 million people, do not have toilets and most of them defecate out in the open, according to United Nations reports. In the slum areas of India’s financial capital, Mumbai, an average of 81 people share a single toilet; in some places as many as 273 people share one toilet
The UN wants India to be a country with proper sanitation, but governments and people are not very receptive to being told they’re dirty, that they need more toilets, says Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation (WTO). Named a ‘Hero of the Environment’ by Time magazine in 2008, Sim, an Ashoka Global Fellow and a native of Singapore, abandoned his business to set up WTO on November 19, 2001. An NGO with 151 member organisations from 53 countries, WTO attempts to mainstream “the culture of cleanliness” and raise global awareness about sustainable sanitation activities. Although it has been more than nine years since countries have been observing World Toilet Day on November 19, Sim is aware that a lot still has to be achieved. “The toilet has always been an intimate part of human civilisation. But these days there is a stigma associated with sanitation habits and the ‘toilet culture’,” he said. The WTO founder, who was in Mumbai on the eve of World Toilet Day this year, has a theory about why governments and people are so reluctant to talk about hygiene: it isn’t cool. “People demand a TV, not a toilet, because it is not aspirational or charismatic,” said Sim who does not hesitate to talk in graphic detail about the dangers of poor sanitation. Sim also believes that the stigma associated with sanitation as an occupation must go. “There is a need not only to train sanitation workers but also to make their job more respectable by eliminating the social stigma associated with it.” WTO has undertaken a mission to improve sanitation across the world, especially in India, as “it causes various diseases like diarrhoea and kills 1,000 children under 5 years of age every day in India”. Poor sanitation denigrates the image of a country and affects the economy too. More than half of Mumbai’s 18 million residents live in slums, and the average ratio of people to toilets is 81:1. There is a requirement for 64,000 toilet seats in Mumbai city alone. There are 1,300 pay-and-use toilets catering to a population of 14 million. In the Clean Up campaign, fines mostly collected by Clean Up marshals were from people urinating in public and comprised 65% of the penalty amount collected. Neighbouring Thane currently has 8,774 toilets seats including public toilets, which cater to more than 457,465 people living in slums. However, to service the population of 211 slums in Thane, more than 3,000 toilet seats across the city are required. According to government norms, a single toilet seat can be used almost 40 times a day. However, due to the shortage, one toilet seat is used 55 times in a day. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA), under its Nirmal Abhiyan project, plans to build 7,800 toilet seats across the city. Under this plan, work orders have been given for construction of 2,384 seats. Work on 340 units has been completed and 573 toilet seats are in the pipeline. The project is expected to be finished within a year. Civic activists claim however that construction of toilet seats in the city will not help because people lack a civic sense. “It is only when these toilets are maintained well will the public feel like using them. Public toilets will hardly be used if they are dirty, and people will continue to defecate on the roads,” said Ramesh Deo, a volunteer. Mumbai’s civic officials claim that the toilet units being built under the state agency’s plan will be maintained by the people. “Local NGOs and communities will be asked to maintain them,” an official said. Faud Lokhandwala, the man behind the self-sustaining, pay-and-use toilets in Delhi’s NDMC areas, also feels lack of maintenance is a major problem. “It is as if maintenance is an alien concept in our country. We can implement the most innovative of facilities, but owing to lack of maintenance nothing works out,” he says. According to Sim, salvation lies in privatisation. “Toilets have to catch up with the growing standards of living in India, hence the need to privatise them -- fast,” he said. WTO works with several NGOs in India that build and maintain public toilets. Along with consumer goods maker Hindustan Unilever, WTO has launched a pilot programme on some premium Rajdhani Express trains to keep toilets clean in return for advertising space. “This is an example of market factors solving a big problem,” says Carolyn Jones, global hygiene manager at Unilever. “It is a sensitive issue, but a serious one that has to be the shared responsibility of government, companies and people.” Source: DNA, November 19, 2009
Hindustan Times, November 19, 2009
http://www.zeenews.com, November 2009
http://www.breakingnewsonline.net, November 2009
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