Over 50% of slums in urban India have no access to toilets. Without the privacy and hygiene of proper toilet facilities, members of the urban poor risk their health and safety every time they relieve themselves. Those living on the pavements and in some slums need to resort to defecating out in the open, an undignified and uncomfortable activity which poses health dangers because of the waste left out in public space and safety concerns for women and children who expose themselves out in the open. Women often wait until darkness to relieve themselves for privacy and safety reasons, another unhealthy and unpleasant consequence. People who reside on the side of the railways often need to use the dangerous rail lines themselves as a toilet since no separate facility exists. This results in a steady stream of deaths each year as people are caught unaware while defecating and run over by speeding trains.
Khatrabai Londhe, a woman from Ghatkopar community in Mumbai, explained some of the safety problems that her community faced when they had no toilets available and had to result to open defecation: “We use open land for defecating. People passing by can see women squatting. The day before yesterday an old women went out to defecate at seven in the evening and a man came from behind and grabbed her. . . Men hide behind the bushes and watch women when they are squatting. If they see a woman alone, they creep in and molest her.”
People should not need to engage in risky, humiliating, and potentially life-threatening behaviors in order to relieve themselves. Because of this, the Indian government has demanded that government municipal corporations provide community toilets for public use, but unfortunately the government has not been able to grant toilet access to everyone in need. Furthermore, the toilet blocks built by municipal corporations are often poorly designed, over-used, and unmaintained such that the facilities do not improve sanitation conditions very much. Those who depend on municipal corporation toilets complain about the lack of cleanliness in the facility, the over-crowding of the space, and poor maintenance such that larvae often emerge from the toilet and crawl up their bare legs.
Access to a safe place to defecate is a basic human need. Poor communities need alternatives to the methods of human waste disposal currently available to them, and they are capable of producing solutions to the problem if they can obtain the financial and organizational tools that will lead to collective mobilization and action. Many solutions to the problem of defecation and sanitation exist, and with negotiation and collaboration within communities functional toilet blocks can be constructed and maintained.
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