Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit) | Hacker News Reader

Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

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56 pointsdang36 comments

Sanitation is the proverbial uphill battle in India. West and affluent Indians often do not understand the full extent of issues here. Some 15 years ago we built 5 toilets (along with flush) for a community of sheep shepherds deep into the jungles of Maharashtra-India. 6 years later when we visited them again it was embarrassing to see that they were using the toilets as shelter for their sheep and still defecating in open.

Their logic was flawless. Why should we change our priorities because you think what we are doing is wrong. We thought it was a lesson not to interfere in their affairs any more.

Some changed land regulation laws made their land extremely valuable. 5 years back these people sold their land for multi-million dollars. Now these people are into Trucking and Fishing business with homes better than mine own.

This is a anecdotal evidence and must not be used for any kind of conclusion. I visited Dharavi-Mumbai(largest slum in world) where there is literally no space for toilets. Every morning there will be like 1000 people trying to use like 20 toilets. There are people who then have no choice but to defecate in side their home in a reusable utensil and throw it out in gutter. Men can defecate in open but women sometimes even soil themselves standing in line. It is pretty horrible given that this is the same place responsible for making snacks for millions of Mumbai residents. [1]

[1] http://sanitation.indiawaterportal.org/english/node/2918

Is that link your work? Do you have more about what you do?

No that is not the link to my work. The work I referred to was the work by a local Temple and I was a 15 year old volunteer who laid bricks for toilets. Never had the big picture that time.

There is some irony in here. I know of cases where people broke up the toilets built with govt money just to sell the bricks. I am glad however, that the discussion has been less myopic than I would have otherwise expected: oh look at these poor Indians why don't we get some money and build them toilets.

Yes. The discussion around education in India however remains myopic. Lets build "free schools" for poor Indians remains the objective which has achieved very little.

I definitely agree that the community is integral in implementing long-term solutions. We believe that access to toilets is a right, and so our mission is to fight alongside these communities to realize access to this sanitation infrastructure. Community input starts with identifying the right location to put the facility (we focus on rural areas where the space is not an issue). Community members petition to get Indian government land handed over for us to build on, and local community members are the folks hired to run the facilities.

Great work.

From my visits to Indian villages, open defecation seems more of a choice that the people make. Even though people have toilets in their houses, they still prefer not using it. Of course not everyone has access, but even the ones who do prefer not using it.

Another issue with public toilets I can think of is hygiene. How do you educate a large population to use toilets and use it reasonably, otherwise it would be a disaster for the maintainers and the public. The point is, most people would be first time users.

Another issue is to do with social status and the caste system. How do you plan to get people belonging to different social strata and castes(yes, it still exists!) to use the same toilet. Could you share your experiences regarding this issue so far?

Thanks! You bring up some great points!

In the communities where we work right now, the vast majority of people don't have toilets in their homes, and they do understand the importance of using toilets. Right now, the government offers a reimbursement program for families who build a toilet for their house, but most people cannot afford this upfront cost and see corruption diminish the amount (if/when) they're paid back. Another big issue is land ownership - if families don't own the land they live on, this significant investment doesn't make a lot of financial sense. We see our role standing in solidarity with Indians making these tough decisions with incredible social, health, and economic outcomes.

You rightly pointed out maintenance as another key issue! We sell safe drinking water from our sites and use that revenue to pay for the facility to be cleaned 2x a day and maintained by our staff. We're tracking daily toilet users and see that people use our facility consistently.

There is definitely still social stigma connecting handling human waste and those at the bottom of the caste system. Our model is designed with this understanding. Waste is disposed of directly from the toilet pan into our biogas digester to decompose, so no humans have to handle the waste. We've also have hired members of these communities to work with us, and have seen them promoted and earning more money than the would in another other role.

UNICEF put out a rather humurous video called "Take The Poo to the Loo" an attempt at changing the cultural acceptance of defecating whereever they seem fit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_peUxE_BKcU

If you are interested in learning more about the cultural and societal implications of open defecation, you can also check out a video series we helped put together last summer. The focus/perspective falls on rural Indians (naturally, the real cultural experts on the matter of open defecation). Videos feature folks working to increase access to toilets, a drama troupe doing grassroots education work, and women talking about their personal experiences. http://www.youthkiawaaz.com/giveashit/

Hi there! I'm Joan, one of the Directors at SHRI. Happy to talk more about sanitation or answer questions about our work!

I can't get your website to open up. Shows up completely blank

Sorry to hear that! The issue was just brought to our attention, and we're working on the fix. Your browser is probably set to block cookies by default. Turning that off should allow it to load.

This is great.

Sometimes the problems of open defecation are more complex than just a lack of toilets.

Here's a short article that mentions some of these: http://www.irinnews.org/report/102414/when-shit-happens

Definitely agree! As the article mentions, simply tracking the number of toilets built is not enough. We track daily toilet users at each site and couple access to toilets with access to safe drinking water because our goal is to see long-term improved health outcomes!

Gram Vikas Mantra is one effort for to reduce open defecation.

http://gramvikas.org/water-sanitation-mantra

here is his TED talk: http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_madiath_better_toilets_better_l...

don't count your chickens before they're hatched http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2325502/Map-shows-wo...

Correlation?

This is a wonderful idea, but sanitation and health rights goes hand-in-hand with civic duty to where one lives and works. It's not just the responsibility of governments to keep an environment safe and clean. Citizens must do their part, such as minimize their ecological footprint, pick up litter in their communities, be a good neighbour and so on.

A sense of civic duty seems to be amiss nowadays. Just look at the streets strewn with litter, or the runaway urban sprawl by rich land developers who have no regard for natural habitats.

We can't just throw money at the problem. That's not sustainable. People need to be educated to take responsibility for their surroundings.

We all have an impact on the environment. We all have a say. It is our world.

This may be true on some poetic level, but helps little the Indian kid who has to urinate somewhere.

I'll reword my comment since you seemed to miss the point: Civic duty goes hand-in-hand with sanitation and health rights. Otherwise, it is unsustainable, even counter-productive to provide toilets for an Indian population that will not use them or maintain them.

We also value the civic engagement component of our work! We've seen the members of the communities where we work to be highly motivated to advocate for themselves to get their local representatives to build the toilets as promised in Swachh Bharat.

I love your optimism and motivation to make life better for others. You are a true leader and an inspiration!

This is such an incredibly sad Country. My wife is Indian, from Noida, we went there two years ago. I saw much of Delhi. The amount of pollution, poverty, filth, homelessness including children that are begging in the streets hooked on who knows what drugs and being molested and raped is staggering.

I remember one little girl maybe 10 that came up to my wife and I because she saw my wife using a small travel bottle of hand sanitizer. And she really wanted it. Didn't ask for money just that little bottle of hand sanitizer. She thought it was lotion. We gave it to her and she tried to use it like lotion on her arms and hands. She just wanted to be a little girl doing little girl things. She was covered in dirt, hadn't bathed in who knows how long.

It's effing heart breaking there. I mean that. Women are constantly harassed at best, gang raped at worse. They can't go out after dark in most of the country. Indian male society HATES women. It's literally one step away from the Taliban. Not all Indian men, but its a majority. Women are not safe there at all. The police are lazy and useless. Corruption is rampant. Everyone is out for themselves. It's dog eat dog. Rolling blackouts. Unfit water supply. No proper sewage. Appalling infastructure. The country was in better shape under British rule. And that PAINS me to say that being Irish in blood. The Indian government has just failed the people. They are xenophobic when it comes to business. State run monopolies or family owned monopolies large and small. Very very hard for non Indian controlled capitalism to get in there.

It is just such an depressing place. Which is incredibly sad because it has so much beauty and history and culture and food! I don't know what happened to that place. You go from the Karma sutra, an epic depiction of the love of women to gang raping women on a daily basis. WTF?

Ugh, it's just sad.

I am Indian. I agree with everything you said, fairly accurate analysis of the situation.

So you judged a whole country after visiting a single city?

>one step away from Taliban

Really? I mean, really?

I would expect this kind of bullshit in maybe r/worldnews but not in HN.

He might have exaggerated a bit but overall conclusions are still right on point.

I've lived all over india (due to the fact that my father was in Indian army) and what gp said is true everywhere in India.

We have to admit what is wrong with our country. Feeling shameful, defensive, angry, proud, hurt ect is not going to help anyone and infact is counter productive.

I am never an apologist for the Indian State, but to say, India would be better under British rule, is a NO - NO for me. In spite of its failures at many levels and mostly falling short of expectations, India is a miracle. There is no other way to put it. The population of entire Americas, north-south and central is lesser than population of India. So, if you are seeing grotesque poverty and violence, well they are still there in Americas.

Xenophobia is really not a phobia if you read the history of Delhi. I mean this city has been sacked since 10th century and regularly had its population obliterated.

I agree with some of the points you made. But saying that indian government has completely failed and it was better under British rule is not completely correct.

Some of the achievement of independent India are

1) Fully functional democracy: India is perhaps the only country which is able to avoid a strong dictator among all its colonized peer. We provided universal suffrage from day one. Indian democracy is not perfect but we regularly topple corrupt or inefficient government without bloodshed or civil war. Considering the diversity in culture and not so educated population this is a great achievement

2) Creating a country out of diversity: During Indian independence Churchill said India will soon be broken down into pieces. Many others believed the same as difference between different part of India is far greater than europe. Still we survived any major secession effort and currently very few Indian want to be a independent nation. We have 14 major languages. Two of our south asian neighbours went to civil war just because of two major language could not coexist. We have the 2nd largest population of muslim living peacefully with about a billion Hindu population without going through radicalization. In retrospect this unity in diversity will be biggest achievement of Independent India

3) Food self sufficiency: Through out British rule famine was a part and parcel of our life. Just in Bengal famine in 1943 about 3-4 million people were killed. If you consider the magnitude it can only be compared to holocaust. Even in 1950s and 60s we had literally beg USA or USSR for food grains. Currently we are completely self sufficient in terms of food which is a big achievement considering the need for feeding more than a billion mouth

5) Strong Institutions: Independent India has created very strong Institution including a fair Judiciary system, Monetary Institute(RBI, SBI), Educational Institutes (IIT,IIM,AIIMS) or research institutes(ISRO). Benefits of these institutes can be felt even in silicon valley. Also because of the achievement of students from these institutes abroad, India could create a strong software and service industry

6) Forming the base of strong economy: Because of all the above points (and many other) currently India is considered as the fastest growing major economy. Its current economic situation is somehow similar to China in 2001. As we embraced market economy 15 years after china I think it is in a comparable situation. Next 20 years of growth of above 6% can do wonders to infrastructure as we have seen in China.

People always compare India with China and come to the conclusion that it is a failed state. But in my opinion apart from China and South Korea ( I am excluding city states) India have done fairly well after independence in comparison to other colonial countries, and is poised to progress in much faster pace. My only regret is that we should have embraced market economy 20 years before. But still saying Indian government has completely failed in not entirely correct

> Independent India has created very strong Institution including a fair Judiciary system

Justice delayed is justice denied. Its a complete joke, locals have no confidence in it. People with money and influence don't go to jail, period( couple of exceptions here and there but mostly true)

This comment perfectly illustrates the complete and utter ignorance some people over the developing world. It's shameful, you visited India but you learned nearly nothing from the trip.

"One step from the taliban" - seriously where have you traveled ? Have you been to Saudi Arabia ? Do you think India is a country that does state sponsored killings adultry. I have 5 female cousins in India who vote, work as engineers and doctors, and chose their husbands. Do you think that was even possible in Afghanistan ?

"Dog eat dog" - a functioning 1 billion person democracy is a dog eat dog world?

"Better under British rule" - do you have any idea what the impact of British rule did to India ? My grandfathers shed blood, sweat, and tears to fight british imperialist which raped and ravaged our country. Do know about the 10s of millions killed in famines directly linked to British rule? Do you realize the British literally starved to death many of my ancestors ?

Do you know anything about partitions history? Do know that after sucking the resources of India for over 100 years divied up the subcontinent in two weeks without consulting the natives and mismanaged the process so badly that 10s of millions died during partition. Go google the British chancellor in charge partition to understand how disgraceful rule contributed to millions stranded and dead during independence.

"Raping women every day" have you been to South Africa? Indias rape rate is not even in the bottom quartile of rape rates in the world. again it's a huge social issue but to say that it's specific to India is profoundly ignorant.

I'm not disaknowledging the breadth of issues that our 1 billion person country faces, but you have no idea what you are talking about. Go spend a little bit time outside your bubble so you can understand that all the social issues you mention exist across our globe. have you ever visited a developing country before ?

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11362332 and marked it off-topic.

I feel the 'one step away from Taliban' is taking it too far especially when you probably (I'm assuming here) haven't had any exposure to it other than what we see in the news.

It should also be noted that a lot of the problems in India currently are due to the British rule. Many of the issues seen in India are similar to the issues faced in England during Victorian times probably because of the education and societal values they brought to India.

Now, the country is doing what it can (of course it can be better) with the limited resources and excess population.

I upvoted inspite of the exaggeration. I think it was unintentional. You are just generalizing and extrapolating too much from Delhi visit.

That India under British rule was better is an offensive claim, but let me comment on the parts where there is some truth in what you say.

Being an Indian I confirm with sadness that Indian males from many states (more so up north, and more so the type that regurgitates 'all women are to be worshipped, they are like ma bahin (mother and sister)') consider women easy meat as long as no one's looking, sometimes even when they are. In many of these states there are very few platforms for male and female population to share healthy and easy proximity. Heck, the political party that the current prime minister hails from has a long politically profitable history of beating up couples (sometimes on television) for doing just that.

You may have also noticed that incidents of rape often happen across social strata, more specifically most of the rapes (well those that make it into news) are rape up.

A part of the problem is that parts of India are very feudal and deeply hierarchical (Pakistan much more so). One strata shits on those below with entitlement. Pick some from the 'lower' strata, they would have never experienced common courtesy or consideration from strata above, not just the current generation but for generations past. Courtesy, respect and considerations would be alien to them.

It should not surprise anyone that cross strata empathy is almost non-existent.

Now look at who is building the infrastructure to be used by the upper strata, its those who are relatively at the bottom. Do you think they will give much heart into their work ? Its not like they will get to use that infrastructure much or have since generations, just shat on.

I agree there is a lot of homelessness, but strongly disagree that the society hates women. I grew up in India and I will say there is a lot of respect for women in India. The uneducated/unemployed people are always there in every country, you will see a higher percentage in India and what you describe is mostly their doings.

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