
India’s Toilet Race Failing as Villages Don’t Use Them - eplanit
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-08-03/india-s-toilet-race-failing-as-villages-don-t-use-them.html
======
hingisundhorsa
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://ourhero.in/population/villages/mukimpur-111460)
[http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-
pradesh/muzaffarnag...](http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-
pradesh/muzaffarnagar/jansath/.mukimpur)

Taking a look in Maps:
[https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+I...](https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+India&hl=en&ll=28.361038,77.918419&spn=0.004522,0.008256&sll=3.232214,101.380968&sspn=2.626814,4.22699&oq=mukimpur&hnear=Mukimpur,+Bulandshahar,+Uttar+Pradesh,+India&t=h&z=18&lci=com.panoramio.all)

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.

~~~
bignaj
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?

~~~
ilaksh
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.

~~~
bignaj
_> The problem is that resources are not being allocated fairly. One of the
main things that sustains that lack of equality is racism._

I see how lack of plumbing/sewage/running water is a major issue (thank you
for adding that) but I was put off by you pulling the race card without
substantiating it at all. Unless you can provide some evidence, racism does
not seem to be the issue here -- lack of plumbing is the issue.

~~~
ilaksh
Saying that a country is a "developing nation" or slamming a culture or
talking about lack of eduction or talking about population, these are all the
same types of racist things that British colonialists have used to disparage
India or other countries for hundreds of years.

Even "developing nation" is a racist term used to cover up extreme inequality
to the point of repression where the rich white countries hoard fuel and
control and then point at brown people and say they are inferior and just
haven't caught up yet. Where the reality is that those countries have advanced
civilizations going back thousands of years and just aren't being allowed
their fair share of the resources and so cannot "develop" every part of their
country.

Or more generally, not even specifically British people or white people or any
group, this is on a spectrum with classism. And its the same issue -- unfair
distribution of resources is excused by pointing at the resulting situation
and implying that the people have inferior qualities that cause the situation.

~~~
seanflyon
I don't see how "developing nation" implies that these people have inferior
qualities. It implies that these people are progressing faster than "developed
nations", though they are for the moment still poor. You could call it
classism, because it recognizes a wealth disparity, but I don't see how you
can distribute resources more "fairly" without recognizing wealth disparity.

------
parennoob
[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.

~~~
rdtsc
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.

~~~
bane
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.

~~~
erroneousfunk
Septic tanks are common in rural areas, not just "poor" ones. I grew up in a
household that was top 5%, both by personal wealth and household income.
Beautiful house, nice property in a fairly rural suburb (100 houses in the
community) But still, too remote to have a public sewer system running to it.
Everyone had a septic tank, and they had to get pumped every few years.

They're also _nothing_ like outhouses. You'd never know the difference, if you
were just visiting someone's house, whether they had a septic tank or a sewer.

------
suprgeek
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.

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

Could you explain?

~~~
michaelbuddy
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India)

~~~
dominotw
Thats not what he asking. He is asking how caste system relates to toilet
issue.

~~~
kamaal
Oh, there is some thousands of years of historical perspective behind that.

Historically lower castes in India were supposed to be the people responsible
for cleaning, janitorial work etc. That's more like putting it mildly, they
were sort of forced generations after generations to do absolutely despicable
stuff like scavenging human waste. Cleaning streets, gutters etc. What's more
you are forbidden to marry outside your caste, and there was a another social
disease called untouchability- which was basically you can't share the same
space with the lower castes. Like religious places etc. There are some extreme
instances where people weren't even allowed to walk on the same roads.

They were barred from education, or any other work of dignity.

In short the worst kind of jobs were left for the lower caste. And people
expect the same to continue, now as well!

~~~
BrandonMarc
The article also mentions how a common employment of women of the lowest caste
is carrying leaky buckets of feces away from the toilet area, often on their
heads.

------
PhantomGremlin
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-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-in-
india-set-off-safety-worries.html)

[2] [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-
sanitation...](http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation-
in-india-may-afflict-well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html)

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

~~~
PhantomGremlin
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...](http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/UCM275353.pdf)

------
refurb
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
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_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilization))

~~~
jessaustin
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.

------
avighnay
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.

~~~
kamaal
>>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.

~~~
avighnay
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.

~~~
kamaal
Frankly speaking the problems with that of the lower caste are incomparable
with those of Garbage picking personnel today. I'm not saying its an easy
task, but there is an economic incentive attached to that today.

Garbage pickup in any Indian Metro today is contracted and billed at a
reasonable price. There is also a huge incentive to collect stuff plastic, or
broken stuff and sell it to recyclers. If I'm not wrong picking up industrial
waste for a price is one of the most profitable businesses of the day. As far
as I know 'Gujri'[Dump yards] millionaires exist in a city like Bangalore.

But its nothing like what the poor souls suffered in the past. Where they were
condemned to do it, because they were thought to be _born into it_. Being
denied the right to share the same space with other 'higher castes', not
allowed to study, or even at times denied to walk on the same roads as higher
castes did, or untouchability. Compare this to the situation today, where in a
city like Bangalore the contractors just refuse to pick up the garbage when
they are not paid, and your roads will just overflow with filth. This kind of
at-will denial of service wouldn't have been imaginable to the lower castes in
the past.

------
neil_s
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.

~~~
ChrisNorstrom
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
> 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).

~~~
xenadu02
Yeah but we get the point - cholera was the appropriate disease to cite, many
outbreaks caused when the sewage people dumped in the streets or rivers seeped
into groundwater supplies and wells.

------
XorNot
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.

~~~
parennoob
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.

------
bruceb
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.

------
chime
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.

~~~
xenadu02
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.

------
QuantumChaos
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.

~~~
jessaustin
_...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.

~~~
bane
> 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.

~~~
jessaustin
My experience in gardening leads me to believe that "fresh" manure is actually
not that great for plants. However, pile it up and let it stew for a year or
two and you're left with good fertilizer.

TBH, I've only used livestock manure for gardens, so perhaps human manure is
different, but I rather doubt it.

------
known
People in India hate their Neighbourhood due to
[http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-
no...](http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not-
past.html) and [http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-
india-...](http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-india-most-
racist-country-in-the-world-/20131017.htm)

------
conover
Think of the children, seriously:
[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-
sanitat...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation-
in-india-may-afflict-well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html?referrer=)

------
sekasi
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
Most of the world lags far behind Japan, then.

~~~
byoung2
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.

~~~
sixQuarks
that is the amazing thing about Japan. They have the largest discrepancy (by
far), of private/public bathrooms. I'd love to know why that is.

~~~
deciplex
The reason for it, i.e. the reason you believe this, is likely confirmation
bias I think. There _are_ poor-quality restrooms in Japan, but whether they
are 'public' or 'private' has little to do with it. You can go to a city
office, or a police station, and it's even odds what you'll find. Likewise,
you can go to a shopping center, and also find examples of both, and I will
say that personally some of the worst restrooms I've seen in Japan have been
in older shopping malls. Train stations will run the gamut, which doesn't give
much evidence either way, regardless of whether you consider those public or
private. Parks tend to be lower quality, but there are exceptions.

Instead, what you'll find is that it tends to depend on the age of the
building. There are seem to be very few examples of low-quality restrooms
built in Japan in the last 10-15 years, regardless of who paid for the
building.

~~~
sixQuarks
yeah, but the fact that there even exists hole-in-the-floor public toilets in
Japan kinda ruins your argument. I've been there, and seen it myself multiple
times. In the US, I've never seen a hole in the floor bathroom anywhere except
camp grounds. (I've also never seen a massaging, heated toilet seat either)

~~~
deciplex
I guess you're really not into those, then. Personally, I don't find them all
that bad. In fact, if upkeep at a place is lacking, like e.g. especially in a
park or campsite, they're much better.

Anyway, I'm done discussing toilets :-)

~~~
sixQuarks
I get my best reading done in toilets, so I don't mind talking about them.

~~~
deciplex
Ha, well that certainly explains the antipathy towards squat toilets.

------
kolev
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!

------
ender89
... 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.

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

