India is home to over a billion people, a robust economy, and the largest democracy in the world. It is also home to perhaps the most pressing public sanitation issue on the globe.
Generations of cultural influence and lack of access have given rise to a staggering number of people who defecate publicly in India. Especially in rural regions, contaminated areas have left villages with high rates of child mortality and a plethora of deadly diseases. Despite work by government, non-profits, and market-based institutions, the public defecation crisis continues to take lives across India. No effort is extraneous; the practice of public defecation poses a serious danger to Indians and it must be met with an effective and concerted response.
The gravity of the public defecation crisis cannot be overstated. While India accounts for only 17% of the world’s population, it is home to 60% of people in the world who practice public defecation. Even with access to clean facilities, many Indians choose to continue the unsightly practice. Long-standing traditions stand in the way of sanitation efforts. The use of a toilet seems practical to us, but the same can’t be said for a family that has never been introduced to the technology. When surveyed, many Indians praised public defecation as an enjoyable and comfortable social tradition. The Laws of Manu, a sacred Hindu text, also encourages believers to practice public defecation. Developed in a time when the detrimental health effects of ingested bacteria were unknowable, the text was successfully engrained in a population’s mind over generations.
There is a laundry list of diseases that arise from public defecation. Some correlations are obvious: infected areas that are used to raise crops or come into contact with nearby streams are liable to transfer bacteria to Indians. Bacteria found in the fecal matter has been found to cause enteropathy in consumers, stopping the absorption of nutrients in those affected. As a result, malnutrition runs rampant in heavily affected areas.
Children with underdeveloped immune systems comprise the most affected population in India. It is no surprise that India is home to nearly half of all malnourished young children in the world. In fact, India accounts for 20% of worldwide child mortality, suffering more than their fair share of devastation compared to their percentage of the worldwide population.
Narendra Modi, India’s prime minister who took office in 2014, has consistently emphasized the importance of building new latrines. Prioritizing sanitation development over the construction of temples, Modi has sent a clear message to the Indian people: the problem must be solved. By 2019, Modi has promised to eradicate the practice of public defecation entirely.
The government’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign has adopted a multi-faceted approach to tackling the crisis. Many local sanitation projects are being organized in communities by campaign leaders. In conjunction with Google, the Indian Ministry of Urban Development has also begun mapping the locations of existing public toilets so that citizens can better find the nearest facility. Unfortunately, many of the existing toilets are in disrepair. In rural areas, there simply aren’t any toilets to use. As a result, PM Modi also plans to build a tremendous amount of toilets for public use. Beginning in October of 2014, Modi pledged to construct more than 110 million toilets in the following five years.
When the national government sometimes fails to meet the goals of their campaign, local governments have stepped in to support the cause. For example, two villages in the western state of Rajasthan, Baytu, and Gida, are offering monetary incentives to families if they promise to consistently use toilets. The municipalities are offering as much as 37 dollars per month for those who pledge to defecate responsibly.
Market-based enterprises and NGOs have also begun to do their part in the fight to create accessible toilets across the nation. A recent toilet fair organized in Delhi included lavatory models that included solar-powered reactors that break excrement into fertilizer, and another that automatically sterilized waste and turned moisture into water. Non-government organizations, like The Gates Foundations, have offered grants for inventors that can offer toilets that are equipped to deal with waste safely. The Toilet Board Coalition (TBD) is a socially-minded group chaired by consumer good conglomerate Unilever. TBD brings together businesses, NGOs, and experts in order to find market-based solutions to the public defecation crisis across the globe. The project has yielded notable solutions such as the Clean Team – a for-profit service in Ghana that employs locals in order to offer regular waste removal.
The old adage says, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Shifting the mindset of countless villages, developing a safe network of public latrines, and ending the plight of devastating disease will take far more than that. It will require the organized efforts of Modi’s administration, the help of efficient NGOs, and the presence of businesspeople who can find value in underdeveloped populations. With the right approach and a patient mindset, India can turn its most pressing health crisis into a chapter in their history books. Stopping the practice of public defecation in India won’t be easy, but it’s certainly in the offing.
