Priorities - About Shitting and Chatting

A frequently reported semi-embarassment for India this month was the joint WHO and UNICEF report titled "Progress on Sanitation and Drinking Water".

To avoid misunderstandings, a definition from the report:

"An improved sanitation facility is one that hygienically separates human excreta from human contact"

OK. I feel that the term "improved sanitation" may be misunderstood - an improved sanitation facility could be expected to be one that showers and blow-dries your backside after use, but that is perhaps too much a Japanese view on things. No, for WHO and UNICEF, a sufficiently deep hole in the ground will do.

As far as the drinking water is concerned, let us just keep in mind that no mountain spring or melting ancient glacier is required for an "improved drinking water source", just some plain H2O without turds.

What was reported widely in Indian media - to an only mildly embarrassed readership - is the fact that India lets 665 million of its people shit in the open every day. Only 31% of India, roughly 366 million privileged people, have access to the fancy amenities the report defines as Improved Sanitation.

Interesting is the comparison: 545 million mobile phones currently operate in India, i.e. 45% of the population have a CDMA or GSM digital cellular phone, 3G currently being rolled out.

Is it only me or is there something wrong with the priorities?

Moreover, whereas the report states that "Open defecation is largely a rural phenomenon, most widely practiced in Southern Asian and Sub-Saharan Africa", I see and smell it in the very urban context of Bombay every day. And if the forest or scrubland of rural India may absorb a lot, urban pavements simply can't - despite the widely spread belief that undesired matter, whether faeces or garbage, disappears if you drop and then ignore it.

It would be unfair to say that nobody cares, there are meaningful initiatives like Sulabh International doing excellent work for the health and dignity of the people. Donate and support, even if the whole thing has a slightly unsettling messianic streak.

On the other hand, there seems to be an underlying issue in Indian culture which does not seem to worry too much about shit.

One example: A while ago at the Bombay Exhibition Centre, in preparation of an international lifestyle-related trade show, I noticed that there were no toilets available, so the workers emptied themselves into an open gutter right next to the exhibition hall and returned with little chance to clean themselves up.

I could not blame the poor guys for leaving disgusting finger prints on my show booth and the smell of the trench everywhere, so I complained with the owners of India's largest private sector exhibition facility, demanding that they open the toilets. They responded that they could not open the visitor toilets for "Labour". Sanitation for "Labour" is unheard of - a plainly bizarre idea. Labour is cheap, labour is low-caste, labour is filthy. No point in trying for hygiene and cleanliness.

It would, however, miss the point if we just blamed "the system". Take a tour of Dharavi and watch the kids shitting on open garbage piles right next to their homes. Pass through the slums along the main roads any early morning and watch the men literally take a crap on the roadside - paved or not. Be on the rooftop of the Rang Sharda hotel at Bandra reclamation in the evening and realise that the barely noticeable movement in the darkness below are women who try to use the cover of the night to save a little bit of their dignity, doing what the WHO would call defecating in the open in a urban environment. More than half of these people have a mobile phone, many of them have satellite TV. Is it really so difficult to organise and execute a hole in the ground?

At the end of the day I can't help noticing the irony: How many of the privileged men I see using proper toilets in hotels, airports and offices keep on chatting away on their phones inside their cubicles or whilst pissing - before leaving the Improved Sanitation Facility either without washing their hands at all or after performing a uniquely Indian ritual of rubbing thumb, index and middle finger of their right hand under running water for 2 seconds. But hand hygiene is a different matter, I suppose.