India’s Toilet Race Failing as Villages Don’t Use Them

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-03/india-s-toilet-race-failing-as-villages-don-t-use-them.html

by eplanit • 12 years ago

72 80 12 years ago

conover• 12 years ago

Think of the children, seriously: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitat...

neil_s• 12 years ago

I am actually blown away by the hateful and bigoted nature of the comments on a site like Bloomberg.com! Didn't expect it to attract those kinds of readers.

ChrisNorstrom3• 12 years ago

People often forget how their ancestors lived. They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague. Of course, now it's a first world continent. Through hard work, introspect, and sacrifice "western culture & people" have become the greatest rags to riches story in history (so far). China, India, & Africa will one day have their own.

voidlogic• 12 years ago

They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague.

For Yersinia pestis (the black death) public sanitation is not a factor... Waste management also often wasn't as bad as people imagine today, the stories of the worst, not average sanitations are what are most commonly related about the past (why, shock value of course).

dalke• 12 years ago

There's no need to single out Europe. The Black Plague is believed to have started in central Asia and also depopulated India and Muslim regions including Mecca.

Nor is there need to go so far back in time. The British were in such poor health that 40% of their military volunteers for the Boer War and the First World War were unfit, in part because of malnutrition and diet deficiencies like rickets. Much of this was due to poverty, and a belief by the rich in laissez-faire capitalism, where issues like clean water, working sewage, and uncontaminated foods were something best left to the markets, not the government.

Much of the gains were seem to have been through social democracy in one form or other, with at least government oversight if not outright control of water, food, health services, etc. It probably helps they haven't continued their long held tradition of invading each other every generation or so. I can't say though I'm fond of the 'sacrifice' that is the White Man's Burden, or the hard work that is conquering and ruling other countries.

Personally, I think Japan and (South) Korea also have impressive rags-to-riches stories, especially considering Japanese seclusion until the mid-1800s. (Japan of course modeling itself on Imperial Germany, and hoping to keep itself out of the the hands Western imperialism, as befell China and India.)

Of course, it's also possible to rank "riches" by GDP, in which case Qatar is the clear winner, since it became a high income economy only since the 1950s.

harmegido• 12 years ago

It's very interesting because I was struck that the western world has its own from of a public health epidemic caused by cultural standards: sedentary working and obesity.

fiatmoney2• 12 years ago

Obesity isn't contagious in the same sense that fecally transmitted diseases are. "Public health" actually has a meaning beyond "big health problem".

Houshalter3• 12 years ago

Sedentary working probably isn't the cause of obesity. It takes a significant amount of exercise to lose weight. There are also plenty of people in third world countries that have relatively sedentary jobs.

Houshalter3• 12 years ago

FWIW it seems to be one guy posting thousands of racist comments in all caps. Although without proper moderation, all it takes is one guy to drown out everyone else.

Houshalter3• 12 years ago

Never mind, all of the comments there are incredibly racist and dumb.

sekasi• 12 years ago

A mate of mine once said you can rate the quality of a society based of the quality of their toilets.

At the time I shrugged it off a bit, but certainly there's a bit of merit to that statement.

justinpombrio• 12 years ago

Most of the world lags far behind Japan, then.

byoung2• 12 years ago

Japan has some of the best (heated seats, built-in bidet, etc), and some of the worst (squat-style, no toilet paper), so on average Japan is just so-so. Of the 40 countries I've been to, the United states has the best average toilet standard.

XorNot• 12 years ago

It utterly hadn't occurred to me that there'd actually be a cultural issue on something like this. It's an incredibly alien concept.

sixQuarks4• 12 years ago

yeah, it's pretty funny when the girl was quoted pointing at the forest "It's only natural to go there". She does have a point though. Problem is, it's not really "natural" to have 7 billion people roaming the earth, thus you can't just use your natural instincts about everything.

parennoob7• 12 years ago

It's not really a cultural issue. [1]

If you are particularly puzzled, go to a campsite with vault toilets and stay there for 6 weeks. Afterwards, you will probably think going in the open is way better too.

[1] Well, not primarily anyway -- though I suspect poop is actually considered more disgusting in Indian culture than Western culture, which leads to the "dump it and get the hell away" mentality, which reinforces the lack of use of these toilets.

refurb• 12 years ago

I always found the idea that India has a sanitation problem because it's too much money to build a proper one confusing. I mean, most Western nations built their sewer system when they were much poorer than India.

It now seems like they don't have proper sewer systems because there just isn't the demand.

orky56• 12 years ago

Actually India is credited with developing some of the first sewer systems and first flush toilets. Unfortunately, many things between then and now have fundamentally changed.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_...)

jessaustin3• 12 years ago

Crediting "India" for the practices of people who lived in the same physical location thousands of years ago seems like a stretch. You might as well credit the English for building Stonehenge, or me for hunting bison with a wood-and-stone spear.

fleitz• 12 years ago

Rural india is much different than urban india.

Even in wester nations, many rural areas don't have sewer systems, they have septic tanks.

QuantumChaos• 12 years ago

I hope they can figure this issue out. As a westerner who never considered not using a toilet, I'm having trouble understanding the pros and cons of using toilets at all.

What happens if a person defecates in the fields? Does this spread bacteria to other people living nearby, or people who eat crops grown in those fields?

What are the beneficiaries of me using a toilet instead of the fields? My family? The people living nearby? Hopefully providing accurate information on these matters will help villagers make better choices.

jessaustin3• 12 years ago

...never considered not using a toilet...

I grew up in and have lived for long stretches in rural areas, so this seems very strange to admit. Have you never spent time in the wilderness? As for your questions, I'd say that a field where food is grown is among the worst places in which to defecate.

bane3• 12 years ago

I'd say that a field where food is grown is among the worst places in which to defecate.

It wasn't all that uncommon (and may still be in some places) for people to use a removable catch in their outhouses so they can remove it and use it for fertilizer. I don't know about India, but I've seen traditional systems like this in various parts of Asia.

I wouldn't recommend it today now that we know about germs and things. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if people defecated in their crop fields with some regularity since it's good for the plants.

ChrisNorstrom3• 12 years ago

You do have a point. As long as they bury it a foot or so underground it's actually quite natural. Otherwise: 1) It builds up over time. Is easy to step on and cultivates bacteria and disease. 2) It runs off into streams, lakes, crop fields, water supplies. (normally, all animal feces does this. It increases the bacteria rate in lakes and streams by tiny amounts. But when humans do it en mass it creates problems.)

kolev2• 12 years ago

I think defecating in the open is overall a cleaner approach, more sustainable, and the article doesn't go into details, but I'm sure those fields are not piles of excrements - I strongly believe people have found ways to do this cleanly over the ages so others don't step over feces, etc.

suprgeek• 12 years ago

Two states in particular of India, Uttar Pradesh (U.P) & Bihar are the worst affected by this phenomenon. Both have very large populations and deeply entrenched caste systems that are at the root of a lot of this non-sense.

The long term solution unfortunately is only time - as the older, slower to change people die off, the newer kids start to assert them selves. Now the society needs to pour in resources for two things and two things mainly -

Education - Teach people about Germ theory, Viruses, etc (among other things) every five year old should be screaming about this stuff.

Women's empowerment - Get more women to participate in decision making (via tax incentives etc) and get them to drive the sanitation effort.

fiatmoney2• 12 years ago

"deeply entrenched caste systems that are at the root of a lot of this non-sense"

Could you explain?

michaelbuddy• 12 years ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India

hingisundhorsa• 12 years ago

I don't know much about the actual conditions in North India. But this article contains some markers that are at best suggestive of exaggeration, at worst maybe falsification. Eg, high levels of descriptive details that don't seem to be relevant and also don't mesh together: 1. Sunita’s family in the north Indian village of Mukimpur

2. When nature calls, the 26-year-old single mother and her four children head toward the jungle next to their farm of red and pink roses, to a field of tall grass, flecked with petals, where the 7,000 people of her village go to defecate and exchange gossip.

7000 people is a lot of people. Especially for a village. A quick check shows Mukimpur in the 2011 census only has a population of either 42 or 151. http://ourhero.in/population/villages/mukimpur-111460 http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-pradesh/muzaffarnag...

Taking a look in Maps: https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+I...

Seems like there's maybe 100 structures there max, even if all were houses, how do you get 7000 people?

There definitely maybe a toilet problem, but I doubt this article is shedding light on the cause.

bignaj2• 12 years ago

This article points to multiple causes: 1) cultural/social issues about where the proper place to defecate is 2) lack of education about germ theory and various fecal pathogens etc. 3) problems with bureaucracy converting money into action 4) lack of emphasis on the issue versus other issues 5) difficulty impacting the huge # of people living in India (problems of scale). These all seem pretty valid to me. I'm sure there are other causes as well and I'd like to learn more... what would you add?

ilaksh2• 12 years ago

Those aren't the real problems. The article is distracting from the real problem and now you are contributing to that.

The problem is that there is no plumbing and sewage in many areas and no resources to build it. There is no running water. The budget that the local government has is say 100 units. Installing a sewage system costs 1000 units. Installing running water for the whole village costs 3000 units. Its just not going to happen.

The problem is that resources are not being allocated fairly. One of the main things that sustains that lack of equality is racism. Racism is a huge problem, even here in this thread. It is often disguised as a disparagement for "lack of education" or "cultural issues" or "population".

These are not toilets like we think of toilets. These are porcelain Port-a-Potties. A very small septic tank directly underneath the toilet which has no water to clean it and must have the feces scraped out by hand.

Would you really consider that to be sanitary? To have a Port-A-Potty installed in your studio apartment? There is no running water in the house or neighborhood. There is no truck to come pick up the Port-A-Potty. Actually its buried in the ground. Someone is going to have to lean in and scrape the feces out.

Or, since there is 4 acre open field about 1/8 of a mile away which is often downwind, people who can walk should go take their shit over there, rather than leaving it in the house, where we will have to smell it all the time.

parennoob7• 12 years ago

Your argument is correct, but you seem to place quite a lot of trust in Census numbers. As someone who has seen some of the actual Census surveys out in the country, that is rather amusing. Making population numbers up, or roughly estimating them is quite common.

Now your structures argument makes sense, so I'm guessing this is more like 600-700 people (most Indian families live in large joint households, so 6 people a house is not uncommon).

chime• 12 years ago

This isn't an issue of using clean toilets with plumbing vs. open fields. This is using a porcelain port-a-potty with no plumbing vs. open fields. Plumbing is the real issue, not the actual toilets.

xenadu022• 12 years ago

Bingo! The real problem in these areas is the lack of running water. Without the water, you can't flush the stuff away into a sewer or septic system.

parennoob7• 12 years ago

[Indian here, who has some experience using these toilets.]

I am not surprised by this, and could have seen it coming a mile away. This is primarily a user experience problem. Warning: graphic discussions of poop-related engineering problems ahead.

"With little access to running water, government latrines typically consist of a large, concrete septic tank with a ceramic squat-toilet on top, enclosed by a cement or brick cubicle with a narrow door."

This is essentially the same as the vault toilets that you find at campsites in the US. I have used them when in a village, and the smell inside is horrible. It's worse in India than US campsites, because the toilets are squatting ones, and your nose is closer to the septic tank. There are a ton of flies buzzing around all the time. Also, the warm weather makes the stuff in the septic tank decompose faster. Compared to this, I would prefer "going" in the open field any day, which is exactly what the woman they quoted says.

Some solutions to this are:

1) Get more ventilation in the toilets. Possibly a solar-powered exhaust fan. This will reduce the smell.

2) Have some sort of smell-blocking chemical barrier between the septic tank and the toilet hole, like they have in airline toilets. This will reduce the smell even further.

3) As they mentioned, most toilets don't have running water. Most people bring a little bucket of water with them to wash up after the act. Have some sort of spraying system that you can load that water into, and wash up. Or try your best to get running water or a rainwater catchment tank providing water to such a system.

If I had any leverage at all with the officials building these, I would strongly recommend the solutions above. Just building a toilet is not a panacea, you also have to make them so that people strongly prefer them to existing practices.

ChrisNorstrom3• 12 years ago

Come to think of it, is a "feces graveyard" a much better solution? As long as they bury feces it a foot or so underground it shouldn't be a problem and sounds a lot more hygienic than the smelly septic tank holes. As long as they mark where feces are buried they can avoid digging them up and let them naturally compost.

parennoob7• 12 years ago

Possibly, something like an elevated platform above a large area might be a better solution for smaller villages. For larger villages, I think you might get into cost-benefit tradeoffs, because the pit might need to be large, and some sort of mechanical system to turn the earth might be required to encourage composting.

bane3• 12 years ago

Thank you for writing this, it really helped me understand better the actual realities of the situation and relate to it.

American here, when I was a kid I did quite a bit of camping, maybe 4 or 5 nights a month. I remember quite a few campsites had helpfully provided various kinds of septic-tank or deep pit latrines. most or the time I'd end up finding a decent spot out in the woods to do my business as it really was a more pleasant place.

So yeah, given a choice of a hot, smelly, dirty box or a quiet place behind a tree, I'd pick the tree almost every time.

It seems to me then that the problem is that nobody is consulting the villagers as to what would be a preferable environment to do their business. What would they like better? How does that conform to sanitary requirements? Is there some intersection of requirements and desires that might make everybody happy?

parennoob7• 12 years ago

So yeah, given a choice of a hot, smelly, dirty box or a quiet place behind a tree, I'd pick the tree almost every time.

Amen. That's this "story" in a nutshell.

....Is there some intersection of requirements and desires that might make everybody happy?

These are excellent questions, but I think no one is asking them. Agencies like UNICEF are busy funding ridiculous and patronizing campaigns like this. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_peUxE_BKcU). As a result, the Government is running hell for leather trying to get some toilets built, and "educating" people to use them, instead of asking "What problems do you have?".

Hopefully, some of the solutions I suggested, or alternatives, might strike some of the planning officials. Otherwise this is going to be a largely symbolic and useless gesture.

rdtsc• 12 years ago

Some East European villages also have outhouses and don't have this problem. They don't have porcelain toilets, just a wooden floor with a hole in it. Interestingly the structures are usually not concrete, or stone, often just a _deep_ enough hole in the ground (my uncle dug down to 12 feet or so), wooden walls and some slanted roof. They have good ventilation, made from wood, with large opening on the top under the roof. Some people are cheap enough to use crumpled up newspapers instead of toilet paper but still beats using ones' hand. And there is usually a small water container and soap nearby to wash hands. Also they are not build next to the house, but usually as far away as possible (far end of the garden or yard, yes going in the winter or rain sucks).

Maybe deeper holes won't work in India because of the soil and rain and it is a quite a bit more humid and hotter there. But looking at that structure the have in the article, I can see how someone would just not want to go there when it is 100 degrees outside and high humidity.

parennoob7• 12 years ago

Cool, really good to hear from another perspective that is different from "I have a flush toilet in my bathroom, and every other toilet is else is exactly like it" :)

Yep, toilets like this in every house would probably work too. If the Government paid for them, or gave financial assistance and strongly encouraged households to build them. These probably would not work for a common toilet (which is the model discussed in the article), unless you had a really deep hole.

Also, the soil problems you mentioned come into play, because the monsoons bring down a huge amount of water. (That's the reason those things are usually built out of concrete.) I think the warm weather still might be factor, whereas it is probably not in Eastern Europe, where it is colder, and consequently slower decomposition and fewer flies.

It's a fairly hard design and engineering problem to solve if you look at these constraints. Unfortunately, these often take a back seat to rhetoric and quasi-shaming news headlines like this one. UNICEF (a UN agency) also does this, apparently without trying to understand these constraints, and throws money into ridiculous "education" campaigns to shame people into pooping in a smelly, constricted area with a ton of flies. (http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/20/world/asia/unicef-latest-anti-...)

As a result, the Government has tried to tackle it head-on without proper planning and design, and will end up constructing thousands of these toilets which no one will use.

bane3• 12 years ago

Actually, outhouses like you describe are still surprisingly common in poor rural areas in the U.S. also. When I was about 10, my family moved from an urban city environment to a very rural one.

While we had flush toilets and running water, there wasn't a public sewer system, everything ran into a large septic tank in the backyard. We had to call a guy to come out every few years to pump it out.

Several of my neighbors, while they had running water, didn't have toilets indoors. Their homes having been built basically by hand by the owners. They were decent enough homes, but if you had to go, you went out to their outhouse in the backyard, which was basically a deep hole in the ground over which was a wooden frame you could sit on. While they had toilet paper to clean up with afterwords, they were simply too poor to move the toilet indoors. Most of these same neighbors got most of their protein supply for the year during deer season or fishing in local farmer's ponds.

It also wasn't uncommon for my and my friends, while off playing around in the woods or out in a farmer's field to just find a secluded spot and do our business there.

Most of this wasn't a surprise to my father, who grew up in an area and a time where outhouses like this were perfectly normal for everybody and cleaning up afterwards usually involved tearing pages out from the Sears catalog or using dried out corn cobs.

For my mother, who grew up later and in a Rust Belt city, it practically terrorized her.

prapam2• 12 years ago

Wouldn't a Pit be a better solution? I live in tier 2 city. The drainage line reached our section few years. Hence everyone builds a pit. No smell or flies. We have it for nearly 25yrs. I am not sure how the decomposition works there are houses older then us without any issues. This is south india btw.

kamaal4• 12 years ago

I agree pit is a better option. We have a pit too. My home is at a lane dead end on an inclined road. And that turned out to be the only option we had.

The plus is having a home in such a place ensures you always get water, even if half the lane up the road doesn't get it.

bruceb• 12 years ago

Not surprising. Even in places with running water and electricity the toilets can be horrible. The reason the toilet cleaning people are shunned is because they are not given the right tools and protection.

When we clean a toilet in the US we have plastic gloves, toilet bowl cleaning solution, disposable cleaning pad and/or a brush meant for cleaning toilets. Often a worker cleaning that in India doesn't have that. Hence only the lowly person does the cleaning and is looked as doing something icky.

Giving toilet and bathroom cleaners a uniform and the proper tools and protections might be a good places to spend money to ensure better toilets. This is my total pop psych opinion after visiting lots of Indian toilets and talking with different people about why toilets in India are so bad.

dominotw2• 12 years ago

WARNING: If you are an Indian, do not read the comments on that article.

avighnay2• 12 years ago

What we end up doing is comparing the apples of present day hygiene etiquette to the oranges of what is remnant of a hygiene system that has worked quite well in its hey days.

What is this system is remnant of is;

A very sound personal hygiene system followed for centuries, bathing two times a day, washing ones feet before entering a house, not wearing footwear inside one's house, cremating the dead outside the boundaries of the village, designated community space outside the village for natures call, two separate ponds in every village one for bathing (with separate designated bathing steps for women and men) and the other for washing clothes and a special pond inside every village temple for ritual bathing. Population has made the existence of this system impractical but that does not mean people will just change overnight relatively speaking.

In fact, up till a few generations back, most Indians would be aghast at the unhygienic notion that one can have a toilet inside one's home!

For eg. a reverse bias is, even today a rustic villager in the remotest part of rural India would cringe when he/she hears that the people in the west just wipe but not wash after they do their job (most Indians, even the ones in the west now, secretly do cringe at this idea in fact).

Why this notional difference? It could be the relative availability of water, the extremes of weather (cannot wash in icy cold water can you?) and such differences that existed in one's past which moulds one's personal hygiene etiquette.

parennoob7• 12 years ago

Spot on. Your comment hits the other, psychological aspect of the this problem (look at mine for the practical aspect).

Correct your formatting a bit though, "What this system is remnant of" is cut off and confusing, "eg." should be "e.g." (for 'example gratia'), etc.

jamesaguilar2• 12 years ago

I can understand the cringe-inducing nature of wiping, but it doesn't actually have negative health consequences. Thus, it is not really comparable.

kamaal4• 12 years ago

>In fact, up till a few generations back, most Indians would be aghast at the unhygienic notion that one can have a toilet inside one's home!

Up till a few generations back, some one's home was clean because some lower class guys were cleaning up while the higher class guy enjoyed their hygiene. Or in other words this was at the expense of other fellow human beings who did all the clean up while one could brag about ancient methods of hygiene.

No civilized society would accept such a classification of people in the modern times. So a person is expected to clean their own mess.

You are right when you say

>What we end up doing is comparing the apples of present day hygiene etiquette to the oranges of what is remnant of a hygiene system that has worked quite well in its hey days.

avighnay2• 12 years ago

Yes and no to the point on 'guys were cleaning up'.

Yes, such a travesty did and worse in some places exists still. However, when the practice of relieving oneself in an area designated for that purpose outside the village for public in general, there was no one cleaning it up, it was left to nature. Ironicaly, The job of toilet cleaning started to exist only when the toilets moved closer and closer to home.

No, we still do not clean up after us and even today whether we like it or not there are still people in all countries throughout the world who are engaged in the waste disposal industry. Guys who collect garbage at your home every morning, still don't really enjoy it whether they come walking, on tri-cycle or in a ultra modern garbage truck and it is the practice in the best of societies today. Collecting decomposing organic waste of any nature is bad experience for anyone.

PhantomGremlin2• 12 years ago

Unfortunately, thanks to globalization, India's health problems become our health problems. A recent NY Times article [1] said:

   Medicines Made in India Set Off Safety Worries
   ...
   India’s pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent
   of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs
   consumed in the United States

BTW we're even more dependent on China. The same article goes on to say:

   The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics,
   steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now
   made exclusively in China.

Edit: I may not have made my point clear. What I'm referring to is a cultural issue. What I would consider to be the "casual" attitude in large parts of India toward sanitation means they might not be as conscientious in adhering to proper manufacturing safety procedures as I would like.

The NY Times also ran a recent article on poor sanitation in India. [2]

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-...

[2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation...

jamesaguilar2• 12 years ago

How is this in any way related to sanitation problems in Indian villages?

PhantomGremlin2• 12 years ago

If workers at pharmaceutical plants are going home every day to "casual" attitudes about sanitation, they are much more likely to have these same "casual" attitudes at work. If they're not worried about things like "night soil", they probably aren't worried about contamination at work, either.

It's easy to have problems making pharmaceuticals. It's bad enough in the USA, I'm sure its worse in third world countries. E.g. here's something that an FDA report said [1]:

   Microbial contamination is a risk to biologic product
   quality and safety. The cost of inadequate microbial
   control in biologic product manufacture is enormous
   as facilities or bioreactor production trains may
   have to be shut down for lengthy periods of time
   ...
   The recent cases of bacterial contamination of
   biologic products suggest that preventative
   maintenance plans ... need further attention.

Sorry, I know this is a horrible stereotype. But what happened to the "good old days" when the Swiss made our medicine?

[1] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/UC...

kolev2• 12 years ago

Is there any proof that diarrhea is due to the lack of toilets? Although septic toilet is still a toilet, I don't think it's orders of magnitude more hygienic solution for a densely populated area. It requires maintenance and cleaning, and in an area with heavy rains, it could be a disaster (according the article, it's concrete one that can easily overflow). I think they should address the running water and soap before tackling the toilet issue!

known• 12 years ago

People in India hate their Neighbourhood due to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no... and http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-india-...

ender89• 12 years ago

... I mean, if you showed me a dingy outhouse on one hand and a serene field on the other, I can kind of see the appeal. Until you realize that the serene field is full of other people's poop anyway.

India’s Toilet Race Failing as Villages Don’t Use Them

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