Urgent problem India is facing -- Open Defecation ??

Prakash Thangavel

Clean Air, Water and poison free food can wait. And we village idiots, who take care of their shit are advised by city morons, who do not know where their shit finally ends up and use another human to clean a clogged septic tank, to use water intensive, chemical using toilets which pollutes the only common well in a village. Who ever invented this great idea of mixing faeces with water end expecting it to decompose easily?

Why this condescending report which paints villagers as total idiots who do not know what is good for them? Should not they have been more careful with words like "behavioral changes" as if villages are zoo and people inhabiting them are inmates?

What is the reason behind declining health? Open defecation or poisoned food? How building a toilet would enhance the health of the village community? I understand the need in congested cities, but in a village is it needed? If you are obsessive about building toilets, build a ecologically friendly pit latrine instead. But that wont happen since you have to deal with shit even though it is decomposed and a very good manure? And toilets were recent addition to our lives and before that too we were healthy

Aparna Krishnan People are educated into foolishness and superciliousness. A deadly combination. that is killing this country. Pack them all off with a golden handshake !!

Chitra Iyengar Yes one of the main causes for ill-health is open defecation. Villagers, according to you eat organic and natural food. No cause for concern. It is the city people who eat 'poisoned' food.

Prakash Thangavel By now villages should have disappeared because of open defecation ! The city people just don't eat poisoned food, they poison the rivers too. Just look at Cauvery at Erode and you will see where sewage ends up and we have to use that water for drinking and farming. Is that not a bigger concern than photo ops like swach bharat?

Rohit Shetti There are times when I thank almighty for all the brain-drain that has happened.

Chitra Iyengar Aparna Krishnan How do you define 'educated'? To me you are a highly educated person and I won't send you to Mars.

Aparna Krishnan Chitra Iyengar ma'am. I have least respect or regard for my education. Yes, it enabled me to exploit, as it is designed to. I worked for 3 years, earned far more than a true hard working farmer would, and saved some money though those degrees before i moved to my village. My village people are far wiser than I in every sense - practical and philosophical. We first need to see our hollowmess. For that one needs to engage respectfully with the poor.

Aparna Krishnan The educated need to first face the uselessness, and harmfulness, of all their learning. Till them they will keep unleashing damage. Not even god can stop them.

Vasudevan Selvaraj sludge will compost naturally as it contains microbes. We need to let the microbes to do its duty. The older style of creating a big tank, collecting sledge there without adding any chemicals and harvesting / Cultivate them to procure compost and reuse the water is the better way of treating sanitation. Usage of water for sanitation is invented during modern era and its not the efficient way. First people need to educate themselves of not using / mixing bleaching agents and other chemicals with sludge, this will impact microbes and hence compost will not happen. bokashi system is a well known method that needs to be adopted at this stage.

Prakash Thangavel Vasudevan Selvaraj this wat shd be taught in the first place

OcttohSemporbnser or19,rteddu 20duimcga1crl6  · 

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To all the government departments and NGOs that are building toilets to save the earth.

My village may not be 'typical'. The villages here in Raayalseema are usually small caste based hamlets of 50-100 houses and there are fields around. Much larger villages start approximating towns and need different strategies.

In 10-15 years I have seen no real issue with the open defecation being pracrtised. At home we dug twin pits which could be used alternately (while the other 'composted'), and these pit latrines were quite ideal also.

The toilets which have been provided under govt schemes are in disuse because (1) people see no need (2) water is an issue.

These issues are very space specific, and I am not generalizing. But I am strongly objecting to the generalizings I see. On all fronts.

@Dunu Roy commented on an article.

October 19, 2014 at 3:56pm ·

Firstly, don't confuse waste management with open defecation - the two are NOT the same.

Secondly, there is NO evidence that open defecation results in higher rates of disease. None of your panelists has been produce evidence about that because there is none. If that had been so, then India would have the highest rate of disease and death in the world - it doesn't.

Thirdly, the BEST 'scientific' way for poo to degenerate is to expose it to sunlight and air, putting it down into a dark sewer or hole in the ground, along with substantial amounts of water, is the WORST way for it to decompose. (Which incidentally, is what the redoubtable government party spokesperson refers to by saying that earlier Indians - not just Hindoos - using to carry 'khurpis' [or tiny spades] while going out into the open, basically dig a small hole in the ground and to cover the turd with a thin layer of soil so that it does not come into contact with flies].

Fourthly and finally, therefore, the 'social awakening' is not required on the part of the masses but a little modicum of 'scientific thinking' on the part of these people who get on to television screens and talk more crap than is being delivered from the sky

So many triumphant posts on making villages Open Defecation Free. On building Toilets. Mostly without water as In our village.

These triumphant posts are by Urbans.

Urbans whose urban sewage systems empty into rivers. Urbans into whose sewage networks other humans descend to unclog. And sometimes die. Urbans whose urban landfill touch the skies.

The village even with open defecation are a far superior system to this urban nightmare. At best some mud can be put over the feaces. That's all the intervention needed. Mostly.

Yet. Projects are written. Aid is got. Much money is made. Villagers are 'civilized'.

One wonders at all this ... at who really gains ...

27Kriti Bhardwaj, Sanjay Maharishi and 25 others

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• Chockalingam Muthiah

  Absolutely. Open defecation goes back to the soil, as do birds and animals.

  Does not pollute as in a centralised flush based systems that is dumped into water bodies. Urbans are happy to flush it away and not bothered where it goes.

  Bengaluru sends about 1400 million litres of sewerage everyday. Downstream water is polluted for hundreds of kilometres.

 

Maty isSph2d5on, d2gls0iiso16rseisdd  · 

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And all the city sewage goes to the rivers and oceans, polluting it all. The village people use the fields, and actually fertilize the soil. Yes, they should cover the waste with mud. But even otherwise their pollution is far less than ours.

And we go to 'teach them sanitation' and 'hygiene'.

(via Hema Jain)

To quote Joseph Jenkins from “The humanure handbook”:

“The world is divided into two categories of people: those who shit in their drinking water supplies and those who don’t. “