On Mahatma Gandhi’s 145th birthday, India’s rather eclectic Prime Minister Narendra Modi came up with a grand idea to deal with the country’s nagging sanitation crisis more effectively.
Modi’s multi-million dollar sanitation project named “Swachh Bharat” (Clean India) that seeks to clean up approximately 1,000 towns, apart from eliminating manual scavenging as a tribute to Gandhi, whose 150th birth anniversary will be celebrated in 2019, should come as a welcome step for a nation where 130 million households still lack toilets and 72 percent population faecate openly. Surely, nothing could be a better tribute to Gandhi on his sesquicentennial birth anniversary, as he firmly believed that good sanitation must have precedence over independence.
To Gandhi, sanitation was intricately connected with not only personal hygiene but also human dignity and well-being, public health, nutrition and even education. He dreamt of an India where each and every citizen will enjoy the benefits of cleanliness and scientific sanitation methods. In fact, Gandhi designed a mobile lavatory, all by himself, to discourage open defecation. But then, even a towering personality like him could do nothing to end such unhealthy practice, thanks to India’s centuries-old societal prejudices. It is indeed a matter of grave concern that of the 1 billion people in the world who have no access to hygienic toilet, India accounts for nearly 600 million. India’s rapidly growing and dense population base complicates the issue further as open defecation leads to serious health hazards when practiced by groups living in close contact. The point is why is it that a country like India, with rich traditions and an enviable economic progress rate, fares worse in sanitation services compared to other developing nations?
Is it because the political leadership here is too casual about taking the problem head-on, partly due to political compulsion and mostly due to a lack of vision? After all, religious and caste factors have been the principal reason behind the Indian preference for going in the open even if there are latrines at home. And exploiting religion and caste issues is the key mantra of attaining success in Indian politics.
Indeed, for Modi, breaking this vicious cycle would require great courage. In a household survey conducted among 23,000 north Indians, more than 40 percent respondents acknowledged that at least one family member prefer to defecate in the open though there are working latrine in their households. Moreover, safety issues are also involved here because rural womenfolk are compulsorily required to venture out of their homes even in the deep darkness of the countryside to answer the call of nature. Can the nation forget so easily the gruesome post-sunset rape and murder of two teenage girls in a field used as a communal toilet in the north Indian State of Uttar Pradesh this summer?
There are many more heinous examples of similar barbaric incidents of extreme intensity which most of the time goes unnoticed due to lack of media glare. Prime Minister Modi’s gung-ho attitude and his determination to install appropriate sanitation facilities deserves accolade if only it is not a part of his image building exercise. Modi has mastered the art of rhetoric so perfectly that even the shrewdest of political analyst will fall prey to his gimmicks. However, Modi’s team must recognize the importance of keeping such vital projects above petty politics. For example, the target of building 5.2 million toilets by September is not only unrealistic but also smacks of a political stunt.
There is no doubt whatsoever that India does need to work on mission mode to improve public hygiene. The UNICEF has estimated that nearly one-half of India’s children remain malnourished and a gaping sanitation deficit is responsible for this crisis. For Modi, some tokenism like photo-ops on Gandhi’s birthday seems to be the only answer to such a critical problem. Having pledged to provide sanitation and sewerage facilities to millions of households in the country, Modi must do everything in his power to reverse the woefully inadequate progress of sanitation registered till date. It is nothing but an irony that there are more households with a mobile phone in India than a toilet. Surely, Modi need not be reminded that poor sanitation impairs the health of Indians thus leading to high rates of malnutrition and productivity loss.
According to World Bank figures, the rising disease burden in the country due to sanitation deficit actually results in losses worth six percent of India’s gross domestic product (GDP). Modi must, from now onward, lay all emphasis on building an efficacious “integrated public health system” nationally, encompassing critical sectors like sanitation system, waste disposal, vector control, water management and food safety. Hopefully, Modi’s “building toilets is a priority over temples” statement will also add heft to the cleanliness campaign.
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