TOILET BLOCKS AS WEAPONS FOR CORRUPTION , JULY 2012

A New York Times blog post published this Monday described a toilet block in Mumbai’s Cheeta Camp slum that perpetually passes through stages of building, demolition, and rebuilding to the rhythm of local elections.  Government candidates in poor urban areas often promise new toilet facilities to gain local support, and many candidates even begin construction on new toilet blocks before voting commences.  Once elected, though, candidates destroy the toilet blocks they began constructing.  The facilities disappear.  This cycle has endured in Cheeta Camp for over 15 years, long enough that residents of the slum no longer expect to see a new toilet block completed any time soon.

Yesterday members of SPARC visited one of SPARC’s most successful community toilet blocks near Crossroad Street in Dharavi.  This private toilet block serves over 1500 men, women, and children, who pay a 20 rupee monthly subscription fee for access to the facility.  Over its ten years of operation, the site has become one of the best maintained and most successful sanitation facilities that SPARC has built (it even has four functional English toilets available for handicap use!). During SPARC’s visit to the site yesterday, one community member spoke about a recent controversy: the local corporator is trying to take over the SPARC toilet block, even though it is owned and operated by a Community Based Organization (CBO).  The corporator is interested in this acquisition because the toilet block is so clean and lucrative that he thinks he can benefit from controlling it.

Building safe, clean, and affordable toilet blocks in slums can do much to improve sanitation conditions of the urban poor, yet toilet blocks are such vital and valuable centers of community life that they have become tantalizing targets for corrupt politicians. Knowing how imperative toilet blocks are to the well-being of their constituencies, some politicians will do anything they can to leverage toilet blocks for their own schemes even if it means taking away good sanitation facilities from the public.  This speaks to the power that clean toilet blocks have in communities, but it also dissuades community members from working to create safe sanitation facilities in their neighborhoods—why spend precious community resources on toilet block construction if the neighborhood will be dispossessed of these new toilet blocks later on?

Communities need a system of accountability, a way to register their facilities so that corrupt government officials cannot steal them away so easily.  Though no system of absolute accountability currently exists, relative accountability can be improved through community mapping: surveying neighborhoods and keeping accurate records of changes and developments in municipal corporation archives. After mapping is reported, existing laws can ensure that municipal corporations will respect the communal holdings on archive.  Another approach to accountability could be institutionalizing the toilet block construction and maintenance process, which involves a streamlined and uniform model of toilet block maintenance.  Communities can and should hold primary responsibility for their own toilet blocks, but to ensure that they stay within community control these facilities must come coupled with a commitment to sustained maintenance and mapping over-time.