At the recently held four-day World Toilet Summit in New Delhi, delegates from 40 nations made a pledge to “mobilise governments, UN agencies, financial institutions, corporate bodies, sanitation service providers, local bodies and other stakeholders” to make toilets available to everybody in the world.
Some 2.6 billion people, of which half live in China and India, still do not have access to hygienic toilets that do not pollute water or soil. The world needs to build 100,000 toilets a day to halve this number going without basic sanitation by 2015, which is part of the UN’s Millennium Development Goals.
To achieve these goals, what India would need to develop low cost technology that is environmentally suitable and simple to implement. These will particularly benefit urban slums where sanitation and hygiene are at their worst.
At the summit there were also suggestions to move away from “disposal-oriented” systems like the western flush and sewers to reuse and recycling sanitation systems.
The Indian Railways too came in for harsh criticism at the summit, for the way nearly 8,000 trains every day scatter 300,000 litres of human waste across the country through their open-discharge toilets.
An aircraft-style vacuum system to replace these old-fashioned toilets that contaminate soil and water was suggested as an alternative. The railway ministry must take this criticism seriously and implement the suggestions.
Water-borne diseases caused by poor sanitation kill millions worldwide annually. It is essential that the civic authorities of each state, and concerned ministries join hands with corporates and NGOs to ensure that adequate sanitation, specially a better toilet system, reaches India’s teeming millions.
A leaf can be taken from Sulabh International’s efforts, which through its Sulabh complexes has liberated about 50,000 scavengers from the demeaning practice of cleaning and carrying human excreta. It has set up more than 5,500 pay-and-use community toilet complexes and about 10 lakh toilets in private houses.
In fact improved toilet systems and better drinking water facilities will actually save the country several hundreds of crore every year, from the cost of treatment of ailments and from loss of working days. If India wants to become a developed nation, improving the country’s sanitation should receive much greater attention.
