Back in 2012, when Jairam Ramesh said toilets were more important than temples, he was attacked by the Opposition for even talking about the two in the same breath. Even his own party washed its hands off him.
Things changed a year later, when BJP’s PM candidate and temple titan Narendra Modi said, Pehle shauchalaya, phir devalaya (Toilets first, temples later). In his first I-Day speech as PM, Modi stayed with the toilet theme as he talked of his dream of a ‘Swachh Bharat’. Within a year, there would be toilets in all schools, with separate ones for girls. Women in villages who have to wait till dark to relieve themselves would also find, er, relief, he promised. The timeframe was not clear.
Umm, does anyone remember the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan? Started in 1999, the key focus of the programme was building toilets in rural India. In the 12th Plan, an outlay of `34,377 crore was provided for rural sanitation, up from `6,540 crore in the 11th Plan.
When Ramesh, as rural development minister, said, “We need a cultural revolution in this country to completely change people’s attitudes toward sanitation and hygiene,” his ministry also tried to do something about it. One was getting in actor Vidya Balan as brand ambassador to talk about the importance of toilets and hygiene in a multimedia campaign. (Put on the radio, and every station is still flush with the Balan ads.)
Another was to flag off a travelling carnival called the Great Wash Yatra. The Yatra, organised by various non-governmental organisations and corporates, travelled through five states in October-November 2012 and used interactive games, celebrities and Bollywood-style performances to teach people about toilet use and hygiene. It travelled 2,000 km, came in touch with over 1,50,000 people and conducted 109 school trainings. Did it help?
In 2014, over 600 million Indians still defecate in the open. Even in cities with a population of over one million, 4 per cent of people do their business outdoors.
There’s another twist in the tale. The issue isn’t always one of supply. Not everyone who defecates out in the open does it because he has to. A survey of 3,235 rural households in Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar by Rice (Research Institute for Compassionate Economics) has found that most people who own government-provided toilets don’t use them. Forty per cent of homes that have a working toilet have at least one family member who refuses to use it. Less than half the people who own a government-built toilet use it regularly, and half the people who defecate in the open, say they do so because it is “pleasurable, comfortable and convenient”. Incidentally, four of the five states involved in the Rice survey were covered by the Yatra.
The need of the hour, thus, is not just toilets; we Indians also need to be persuaded to use them. Government officials leading the sanitation project don’t need to be asked how many toilets they have constructed; they also have to account for what they have done to promote their use. Only then can India do what Unicef advised us in its pithily-worded but stomach-churning film: Take the poo to the loo.
(By the way, Friday wasn’t just Independence Day. A press release informed me that it was also the first-ever World Portable Sanitation Day. Portaloos, anyone?)
shampa@newindianexpress.com