Throughout India over 3,000 dalits (untouchables) remove shit from public toilets every day, stinky excrement sloshing in barrels balanced atop their heads. They come at night and remove the sloppy excrement from holes in the earth. They load it into barrels and carry it far away to prevent public toilets from overflowing.
The necessity of dalits to manually remove and process human waste stems from India’s broken sanitation system, a system that frequently allows 8,000 people to share the same 40 toilets and that leaves over 50% of the poor with no options other than to defecate in open spaces. The uncontrollable quantity of human waste that all Indian cities deal with results from three major infrastructure problems: many cities lack sewage systems, those that have sewage systems do not extend their services to slums, and the ratio of people per toilet seat is so high that excrement does not have time to decompose before public toilets overflow with waste.
Unlike land, water, or electricity, which many poor people have found ways to obtain illegally, sanitation cannot be stolen from a nearby source. There are no shortcuts. In order to be sustainable, sanitation requires collaborated and co-produced solutions with people, technology, and city governance structures all contributing their resources and ingenuity to the issue.
Despite immense need, the Indian people demonstrate deep abhorrence to addressing issues of defecation, its processing and treatment. As a result the poor lack motivation to address problems of sanitation even though the health consequences that result from unsanitary conditions abound. Why waste money constructing more toilet blocks if you face the possibility of eviction? Why pay to defecate in filthy and stinky toilet facilities when you could just as easily go on the streets?
In sanitation surveys done by SPARC’s community groups, surveyors have found that slum-dwellers feel that they lack incentive to build up the infrastructure needed to bring sustained sanitation to their communities. Thus, we believe that technical options need to expand exponentially to address these local challenges. Technical solutions must be costed and also managed at the city level to help specific communities and households decide on the best sanitation method (individual household toilets, community toilets, water treatment, etc.) to meet their particular needs. When sanitation comes coupled with the government’s promise that it will endure in communities regardless of slum rehabilitation schemes, the poor will likely be more receptive to exploring long-term solutions.
Additionally women must be involved in new sanitation initiatives in order to make sanitation projects sustainable, since women understand their community’s style and needs and also they can educate by example and teach the next generation about proper sanitation practices and behaviors. In the past women have been left out of discussions of sanitation improvements in slums, but they will be the key implementers of behavior changes that come with better sanitation and they deserve to participate in sanitation projects as they arise.
If implemented properly, sanitation can become a sustained basis for community engagement with city and neighborhood authorities. Proper sanitation facilities will lead to slums safe from disease and infestation, and they will also grow to inspire better tariffs, garbage collection, health education, and safety in partnership with government authorities moving forward.
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