O P I N I O N S

Guest Column
Toilets or temples is not the debate
The question is why we are failing to provide toilets to all. The other challenge is to ask why we are failing to treat the excreta — the sewage that leaves homes where there are toilets and which goes on to pollute our waters.
Sunita Narain
many years ago, Mahatma Gandhi had said sanitation is more important than Independence. Today, it is time that we say clearly that toilets are more important than temples. When Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said this last year, there was an outrage from the Saffron camp. But now that the BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, has echoed the sentiment, maybe it will bring home the desperate need to prioritise sanitation as a fundamental human right.

Fifty Fifty
Time to step out of Mama’s shadow
‘Mere paas Ma hai’ is a positive statement of matriarchal influence, but now there needs to be more emphasis on what Rahul Gandhi has achieved so far on his own, and a closer scrutiny about who he is.
Kishwar Desai
A mother myself, I obviously have no problems with the vice-president of the Congress party making frequent references to his mother, and calling her his guru. In fact, I would be thrilled if my two children, too, decided to quote me or elevate me to any kind of pedestal — wouldn’t you?

A failure and a missed opportunity
By setting the precondition of improvement in the situation on the LoC and action on terror to take forward bilateral relations, Manmohan and Sharif handed over the driver’s seat to the Pakistan Army, which has never shown keenness to accelerate the peace process.
Raj Chengappa
It is exactly two weeks since Prime Minister Manmohan Singh met his Pakistan counterpart Nawaz Sharif in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, but so far there are no signs of any positive outcome of the high-profile first summit between the two leaders.

Guest Column
Toilets or temples is not the debate
The question is why we are failing to provide toilets to all. The other challenge is to ask why we are failing to treat the excreta — the sewage that leaves homes where there are toilets and which goes on to pollute our waters.
Sunita Narain

many years ago, Mahatma Gandhi had said sanitation is more important than Independence. Today, it is time that we say clearly that toilets are more important than temples. When Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh said this last year, there was an outrage from the Saffron camp. But now that the BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate, Narendra Modi, has echoed the sentiment, maybe it will bring home the desperate need to prioritise sanitation as a fundamental human right.

Mahatma Gandhi’s dream was total sanitation for all. But in the years after Independence we partially ignored his powerful message. We forgot that without sanitation we could not have water security or health security. We forgot that sanitation is the single biggest trigger for improving our quality of life and for ensuring good health for all. New research points out that lack of sanitation is a key cause of stunting of children, a key indicator of malnutrition. We forget that without toilets there can be no human dignity. In that respect, nothing can be more important than sanitation.

The question is why we are failing to provide toilets to all. This is one part of the challenge. The other is to ask why we are failing to treat the excreta — the sewage that leaves homes where there are toilets and which goes on to pollute our rivers, lakes and groundwater. This is the double jeopardy — without toilets with water and hygiene there is disease and deprivation. With toilets with water, there is also disease if the sewage is not treated before disposal.

Currently, sanitation in India has a clear urban-rural divide. While, according to Census 2011, an estimated 87 per cent of urban India has some kind of toilet facility, the situation in rural India is grim. Only 30 per cent of the households have toilet facility and even those figures are highly contested. Survey after survey is showing that we are completely failing in our coverage of sanitation facilities and defecation in the open by over 600 million Indians is perhaps our biggest shame.

The 12th Five-Year Plan report admits that all surveys point to a radical change in approach. It quotes a recent World Bank study in five states, which reveals that only 67 per cent of the toilets are in use in the Nirmal Gram Puraskar villages — government’s programme to reward villages with full toilet coverage. This drops to an alarming 46 per cent in all other villages. Therefore, counting toilets built is not the estimate for sanitation coverage. The question is if the toilet, once built, has water supply and is being used and cleaned by its occupants.

It is time, therefore, that we took stock of the problem and reworked our approach. The first is that we should stop looking at sanitation as the simple task of building toilets. Sanitation service has to be connected to the need to make toilets functional; they must have water; their users must be educated to wash adequately after use, and most critical, the waste generated in the toilet must not lead to new sources of pollution of our water bodies and groundwater. These are challenges for us to confront even as we move towards the goal of providing toilets to all.

But there is another challenge. We are also learning that the technology of toilets — an equipment to handle human excreta in a safe and hygienic manner — has been the least researched in the world. It is clear we need technologies for diverse ecosystems and technologies, which can meet the twin objectives of equity and sustainability. This would require toilets to be engineered or re-engineered so that they can be affordable and also work to reuse and recycle the excreta. This is a technology challenge that we must work on, using both the most advanced science and traditional knowledge. We know that the frontier technologies for toilets exist in space programmes, because there innovation has taken place for extreme conditions. We also know that traditional water systems were engineered in our villages for vulnerability and to optimise on scarce resources. We need the ingenuity and the humility of science to take us to the next generations of sanitation technologies.

Then there is the challenge of sanitation in our fast urbanising habitats. In our cities we have the same challenge of ensuring the provision of toilets but with an added imperative. We must make sure that the sewage that is generated is treated or reused and we must do this urgently and effectively. Today, sewage from toilets in our cities is not treated before disposal in our rivers, which is adding to the health burden of people.

Clearly, therefore, the debate is not about temples or toilets. The only debate we need in the country is how we will ensure that there is a functional toilet to service the basic human need of every Indian — this should be our only worship for the future.

The writer is an environmentalist and director-general of the Centre for Science and Environment.

Fifty Fifty
Time to step out of Mama’s shadow
‘Mere paas Ma hai’ is a positive statement of matriarchal influence, but now there needs to be more emphasis on what Rahul Gandhi has achieved so far on his own, and a closer scrutiny about who he is.
Kishwar Desai

A mother myself, I obviously have no problems with the vice-president of the Congress party making frequent references to his mother, and calling her his guru. In fact, I would be thrilled if my two children, too, decided to quote me or elevate me to any kind of pedestal — wouldn’t you?

Photo: Mukesh Aggarwal

And there is no doubt that Ms Sonia Gandhi is a remarkable woman, despite the difficulties she has faced. She has grown in stature over the years, while still protecting her privacy, and (at least in public) her humility. She is a woman of great strength and also possesses a rather deep insight into human nature, which has allowed her to keep an enormously diverse, often avaricious, and fiercely ambitious bunch of politicians together for more than a decade. There is much to learn from her; that is certain. She also has no problem about the numerous netas taking credit for her successful running of the UPA and the Congress, and is able to control the show without anyone complaining of interference — a difficult combination to pull off. To manage all that in an intensely patriarchal system is really astonishing.

So the son’s admiration of his mother is very understandable. Most of us would side with him on this.

Besides, as I mentioned, all of us wish we were hero-worshipped by our kids, don’t we? There is absolutely no issue about this. Were Ms Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi not working in such close proximity and for the same organisation? While these respectful references to his mother might send out a reassuring signal to the Old Guard in the Congress that the youthful heir apparent has no desire to uproot the old order, it makes New India a little nervous. New India is the emerging country which is no longer obsessed with the Congress history, but is impatient and audacious. For New India constant references to mummy or papa is a complete turn-off. In fact, New India has grown up with few heroes and a lot of homegrown jugaad — and for them inheriting the mantle is a little too easy. This discourse also makes many wonder uncomfortably if Rahul Gandhi is indeed ‘Mama’s Boy’. Does he then need to cut the umbilical cord, as most of our children have done, and move on, or is the shadow of his family always going to keep him in the shade?

Doesn’t leadership mean demonstrating independence in every way? Leadership is not about Rahul Gandhi storming into press conferences and tearing up ordinances. That possibly resonated better with the Mama’s Boy image rather than of a grown up politician. It came across more as a temper tantrum rather than a thoughtful intervention, as most of us who have worked in the real world are aware. If we had done anything like that while the senior management was out of the country, we would have been sacked!

Are his advisers only interested in keeping him looking youthful and naïve, even though they know New India does not believe that prime-ministership is written into the genetic code?

Most of New India, the under-30s that he is appealing to (if they are lucky enough to have jobs), would have been working since the age of 20, and for them this narrative of the Right to Rule (a new Congress ‘right’, along with the right to information and right to food, perhaps) is discomfiting. Remember that Rahul Gandhi’s first speech when he became Congress vice-president also referred to his family’s sacrifices and his mother’s dictum that ‘power is poison’.

‘Mere paas Ma hai’ is a positive statement of matriarchal influence, and none of us should ever denigrate it, but now there needs to be more emphasis on what the young Gandhi has achieved so far on his own, and a closer scrutiny about who he is. But because of the fuzzy and vague style of reporting most media has adopted towards Rahul Gandhi, when he is not giving political speeches we find little or no reference about his life, travel or his lack of a visible companion. This gives a rather worrying poignancy to his comments about his mother. Is this, then, the only relationship he has, apart from that with his ambitious advisers?

He must realise Mrs Gandhi does not need his endorsement and that most of us already admire her. History undoubtedly will be kind to her, while the Congress will be forever indebted to her. But it will help his own case and his bid for leadership if he stops talking about his legacy and more about himself and his own plans for the country. At 40 plus, he is no longer ‘young’ and he must establish his own identity.