How can we solve India's sanitation woes?

According to the 2011 census, 113 million rural households in India do not have a toilet. Nearly 60% of rural India defecates in the open (December 2013, NSSO). As an outsider, one might make the mistake of thinking that our lack of hygienic sanitation facilities is a supply-side problem. But it isn’t all because of lack of access.The government gives a monetary incentive of Rs 10,000 to every household to build a toilet. A 2013 research conducted by 'Monitor Inclusive Markets: A Market Led Approach to Rural Sanitation' found that it should take between Rs 7,000 and Rs 10,000 to construct a toilet in rural India. The government incentive should therefore ideally be enough for a rural household to build itself a toilet. But it isn’t so simple.

Why do people still choose to defecate in the open?

Many families in rural India do not feel the need for toilets in their homes – they prefer to relieve themselves in open fields. Open defecation is socially accepted in these population pockets. Social behaviour is a stronger barrier in improving India’s sanitation habits as compared to lack of infrastructure. A SQUAT study by RICE Institute corroborates that even in households with working toilets – excluding the large number of cases where the toilets lie in disrepair – members still defecate in the open. One obvious reason to this lack of receptiveness to toilets is the lack of education about hygiene. But there are a lot more underlying factors that fuel rural India’s resistance to toilets.

Superstition: Some think that having a toilet will make their homes unholy.

To the average urban Indian, a toilet seems like a basic necessity. Even though urban sewage continues to stink up our rivers, all that most city-dwellers have to do to relieve themselves without worry, is flush. But for the rural Indian, it isn’t as simple as flushing and forgetting. The feasible structure for a toilet in a rural household is one which requires digging a sewage pit. This means, that the excrement flushed out of their toilets will be stored up in their backyards. Ideally, a two-pit toilet model is recommended; the household can switch to the other pit while the filled-up pit decomposes into fertiliser that can later be removed. Now while this model seems like a sustainable solution, there is a psychological barrier in its implementation.

Some rural households think having a sewage pit in their backyard, even if it is underground, well-covered and converts to fertiliser, makes their homes unholy. This shouldn’t come as a surprise from a society which thinks that women in their menstruation cycle are unclean and unfit to even enter kitchens because they supposedly “pollute” their surroundings.

No dignity of labour: Cleaning a sewage pit is work fit only for the lowest-caste 'untouchables'.

This social acceptance norm makes owning a toilet a luxury in villages. To avoid the prospect of cleaning the pit and to be considered respectable within their community, rural households prefer toilets with pits that are nearly 20 times larger than an average pit; naturally increasing the cost of constructing a toilet by at least 200%.

Misplaced priorities: Weddings and festivals over toilets.

Given a choice, the average rural household will always choose celebrating the present and will prefer putting off construction of a toilet to a later date. Sanitation is seldom a priority for households that are often strapped for cash. The households are not motivated enough to make building a toilet a priority in the resource allocation decisions, primarily because they are too rigid in their belief systems and too comfortable to want change.

How do you change the deep-seated superstitions, perceptions and preferences of a society that is resistant to change? This is where their children come in.

“My son said he was ashamed of ‘doing it’ outside. He said it was affecting his studies. That’s when we decided to construct a toilet at home. For him.” This is the testimonial of a woman in rural Tamil Nadu who was enabled by a Milaap.org loan to build a toilet in her home. She echoes the sentiment of 64% of the 3,000 women who have built toilets in their homes with the help of Milaap loans. Their children often attended interactive educational seminars in their schools, either in the form of skits and musicals or in informal question-answer sessions. They would come home acutely aware of the poor sanitation practices followed by their own families and would demand a change.The environment in their schools is helping the children realise that the superstitions and social stigmas that their parents have been harbouring for so long must be done away with.

It is difficult to change how grown-ups think, but much easier to influence the choices and habits of the young ones; and parents eventually always give in to the demands of their children. Adults may not listen to other adults, but they are forced to listen to their own children. Children are teaching their parents the importance of safe sanitation and urging them to build toilets in their homes. And once the child tables a demand, it naturally becomes the household’s top priority.The households with children who have been taught about sanitation in school are more likely to build toilets than otherwise.

What billions of rupees and years of efforts at a national level could not achieve, these little children are making possible. All we need to do is to send them to school.

Send a child to school or help a family build a toilet today. 

The author is an impact assessment fellow with Milaap.org. She can be contacted at gupta.harshika@gmail.com.