|
Muck Tale |
|||||
|
Yes, you have guessed it—it’s the Gandhi month…The only time (unfortunately!!!) when every Indian (I am hoping!) is reminded of an exceptional human being named Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. No diverse and colourful styles here—just the vision of the bespectacled,dhoti-clad Mahatma. The man who steered clear of grandeur and spotlights. The man who believed that our nation could achieve greatness only after the basics had been set right. And who had the courage to publicly claim that ‘sanitation is more important than independence’. Gobar Times has always aspired to adopt the Gandhi style. So, this October we are celebrating his 137th birthday by focussing our attention and yours…on the most fundamental aspect of our everyday life—sanitation. Spirit of in-sanitation Why sanitation, did you ask? After all, there are so many fascinating phases in the life and times of the Father of the Nation we could have picked! Then why this particularly unsavoury subject of toilets? Hey, before you folks begin to wrinkle up your noses, I want you to read what Gandhi once had to say to a senior British official who had not responded to his suggestions on the topic with enough seriousness. “To me sanitation in a community like ours is based upon common spiritual effort. The slightest irregularity in sanitary life is a sign of spiritual poverty. It is a sign of inattention, neglect of duty!” Pretty strong views, right? Well the Prophet of peace felt even more strongly about the disgraceful sanitary habits of his country men and women. And said so, several times, in strident tones. “A sense of national or social sanitation is not a virtue among us… I regard this as a great vice which is responsible for the disgraceful state of our villages and sacred rivers and for the diseases that spring from insanitation”, he once declared. Hygiene hype?
India’s toilet culture We were much ahead of others at the outset. Remains of the world’s first urban sanitation systems can be found in the ruins of the Indus Valley civilisation. In fact, the sewerage and drainage networks developed here, and used in cities throughout the Indus Empire, were far more advanced than any found in the other urban societies in the Middle East that flourished around the same time. For example, in the city of Lothal (a few kilometres away from Ahmedabad), people had toilets in each house, which were connected to covered drains that lined the streets. According to experts, this was one of the ‘finest forms of sanitary engineering’. But our glorious era of toilets ended with the decline of Harappa and Mohenjodaro. From then on, the toilets in India remained primitive and open defecation became rampant. The period between 500 AD to 1500 AD was the darkest age from the point of view of human hygiene. Not only in India, but across the world. Rich man’s housing and forts in India had toilets jutting out on the top, where sewage fell right into the open ground or the river below. The forts of Jaiselmer in India and big houses on the banks of rivers beartestimony to this fact. While the rich used luxurious toilet chairs or stools, the poor defecated on the roads, in the jungle or straight into the river.
Latrine legacy Unfortunately, this habit of defecating anywhere and everywhere seems to have been an enduring one. “I have seen thousands of men and women dirtying the banks of the Ganga at Hardwar” wrote Gandhi, in 1929. That was 76 years ago. Sanitation remains one of most neglected sectors in India, even today. Result? Human sewage poses the biggest threat to our rivers, lakes, ponds, and the groundwater table. Did you know that 80 per cent of pollution in Indian rivers is due to excreta? Every river which passes through a city or a town today becomes a stinking sewer. Domestic sewage also pollutes groundwater, irreversibly. That is not all. Badly maintained sewage lines contaminate piped drinking water supply systems. The impact of this on public health is catastrophic. Poor quality drinking water and sanitation is the second largest killer in India— malnutrition being the first. When sewage is directly dumped into a water body, it destroys the aquatic ecosystem. How? The microorgansms present in the faeces and urine, rapidly use up the oxygen in the water, leaving little or nothing left for the fish, plants, and other creatures underwater to survive on. So to sum up—we Indians are in the process of committing hydrocide (killing rivers and waterbodies) and are slowly but surely ruining our own health. Simply because we don’t know how to manage our excreta!!!! Found guilty: the haves Who is responsible for this terrible mess that we seem to have landed ourselves in? Oh, it is easy to find scapegoats here. Just point your finger at the poor—both in cities and villages—who are forced to defecate in the open because they have no access to toilets. After almost 60 years of Independence, less than 48 per cent of urban Indians and just about 3.15 per cent of the rural population have access to toilets. But hang on….they may be large in number, but they are not the guilty party. At least not the primary ones. The real culprits are the minority. The middle class and the affluent (most of us actually!!!) who enjoy the privilege of modern flush toilets. Confused, huh? Let me explain.
|
|||||
|
Evolution of Toilet System
BC 2500-2600: Mohenjo-daro had a highly developed drainage system where waste water from each house flowed into the main |
|||||
|
Failure of the flush ‘funda'
First lets see how standard toilets and sewage systems—that all of us who live in urban India have learnt to take for granted—dispose human waste. On paper, this is how it This pipe then joins pipes of other buildings, and empties itself into the municipal sewer. This sewer, finally joins the main large trunk sewer. More water is added to prevent the sewer lines from getting blocked. These trunk sewers then carry the wastes to the sewage treatment plants (STP). This involves removing the solids as sludge, getting rid of organic and inorganic pollutants and pathogens. And finally, the treated water is released in the nearest river or sea. But like I said…this is all on paper. In reality, the process is not so smooth and sanitised. First of all, the system is horribly water wasteful. With each flush, over 10 litres of clean water goes down the drain.Then more and more of this precious resource is used to simply flow faeces and urine further and further away from our toilets. Let me give an example. A family of five contaminates more than 150 thousand litres of water to transport 250 litres of sewage!! There is more bad news. Only a small percentage of Indian towns and cities actually have sewage treatment plants. According to the Central Pollution Control Board, less than three per cent of the sewage generated in urban India is treated before the waste water flows back into the sea or the river. Even in big cities and metros which have treatment plants, the capacity of these plants always remain miles behind the volume of sewage being generated. The government keeps allocating money to set up more of these hugely expensive STPs—but it can never keep up with the rate of population growth! Then, of course, there is the problem of leaky, decaying sewer lines, which cost an earth to be repaired and maintained. Most municipalities are cash strapped. So the sewers remain leaky and decaying. Result? A large amount of the sewage never reaches the STPs! So, where do these huge mounds of untreated human filth, loaded with dangerous pathogens go? Into the rivers, ponds, lakes of course, which incidentally are also the drinking water source for these cities!! Image: Right: TOILET TYPES: Rudimentary structures like these can be found in some villages of Tamil Nadu |
|||||
|
The stinking streams How waste meets river… In a typical Indian city, there are two ways of disposing human excreta: sewerage and non-sewerage. Sewerage: Here houses are connected to sewers or pipes that take waste from the toilets to a pumping station. The waste is then pumped to a sewage treatment plant (STP), and is disposed of into a water body. But, the capacity of these plants is always less than the volume of sewage generated. In addition, much of the sewage never reaches the ST STPs as the sewer lines are often leaky! The untreated waste meets the river. Non-sewerage: In India, 78 per cent of the rural population and 25 per cent of the urban population does not have toilets! They either defecate in the open or use pit latrines (15 per cent of urban India and 7 per cent rural population use pit latrines!). The faece decomposes in the soil or is washed off into the river. Waste from the toilets also flows through open drains into the river. So, what happens to the river at the end of it?? See for yourself…
Waste-meter
The Biochemical Oxygen Demand is the amount of oxygen a river requires to break down organic matter , such as faeces, floating in it. High BOD levels indicate extent of organic pollution in the wastewater that flows into a river. It also shows that a river is polluted by organic matter and is increasingly unable to decompose it. A Dying Example... The graph below looks at the BOD level of Yamuna from the year 1996 till 2003. The Blue line of the year 2003 shows that the levels of Biochemical Oxygen Demand have risen from that of the year 1996 (Black line). This means that the level of organic pollution in Yamuna has also increased. It reached as high as 28.8 mg per litre BOD! Whereas, the maximum permissable BOD level suitable for bathing is 3 mg per litre. |
|||||
|
The Ecosan way In 1995, Paul Calvert, a Kerala-based ecological sanitation expert, built a toilet that works in water scarce areas. He built it in a coastal village in Kerala in which 50 per cent of families were consuming water that was contaminated by open-air defecation and 80 per cent of the village had no latrines! The toilet consists of a slab with a hole over each of the two vaults it is built on for the faeces to drop in. A funnel-like device is attached to collect urine, which drains into a plant bed along with anal cleaning water. The two holes are used on a rotational basis for six months and the not-in-use hole is covered with straw to facilitate decomposition. After each use, some ash is sprinkled down the holes to facilitate the drying process. The decomposed faeces is used as soil conditioner! |
|||||
|
Destination: Green toilets Flush toilets and sewerage systems are supposed ensure ‘safe disposal of human waste matter’. All they are doing now is transferring the problem elsewhere. They are pushing the harmful pathogens away from homes to the public at large. All this makes this system of waste disposal terribly, back breakingly expensive. Just consider its economic, environmental and public health costs…. Clearly, our sanitation sector needs a breath of fresh air. All of us need to think beyond flushes. And, while doing that we need to keep three basic truths in our minds:
First, we need to look around. A lot is happening elsewhere in the world. Scientists and ecologists are developing new concepts of sewer-less cities, using new technologies which use very little water or no water at all. Some of these systems have been tried and tested in India as well (see box: The Ecosan way). And finally, we need to look within. We may find the answer in our very own India, with its fascinating diversity of cultures! The Monpa magic Not convinced? Then let me tell you the story of the Monpa tribals. They live in Tawang valley, one of the remotest areas in Arunachal Pradesh, — located very close to the Tibet border.The Monpas, disciples of Lord Buddha, are very different from the other tribals found in Arunachal. They use water wheels to grind grains, which are also supposed to purify drinking water. The overflow from the wheels are channelised to the field for irrigation. The Monpas have developied one of the most sophisticated and eco-friendly toilet and excreta disposal systems in the world. The toilets are built on bamboo stilts in the backyard. The valley has acres and acres of oak forests, The oak leaves are stacked in parmong (local name for oak forests) sheds next to the toilets, and are thrown in, after use. This is allowed to rot and compost. The entire compost thus formed is turned over once in a year, stacked up and dried in the fields. This is later mixed with soil during sowing and transplantation. In many Monpa houses pigs are kept in the enclosures built underneath the toilet floor. Isn’t this an amazing example of sustainable sewage disposal and recycling system?
|
|||||
Was he making a big deal of a trivial matter? Not really. You see, Gandhi was an environmentalist of remarkable foresight and vision. He was aware that toilets are the link between good and bad environment. And most crucially, sanitation acts as a barrier between humans and disease-carrying microorganisms (pathogens) that thrive in human faeces and urine. So, don’t you think toilets can actually be used as a yardstick to gauge whether a society is progressive or hopelessly backward? History has proved more than once that they can be! Now lets find out how the Indian people—down the ages—have scored on this front.
